


The Moon and the Sun

by Cosmic_Corgi



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I hope, La is present but not enough to warrant a character tag, Non-Consensual Touching, Romance, Spirit stuff, a little bit, also I crossposted this on my wattpad, although this is most likely drivel lol, bamf yue, basically I realized how much Zuko and Yue have in common and had a galaxy brain moment, because he sucks, by hahn, idk if I manage to convey any of that but uhhh I Did Try, it's one of those cute bunnies from LoK, original spirit character - Freeform, starts at season 2, they/them pronouns for spirits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25516996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic_Corgi/pseuds/Cosmic_Corgi
Summary: Yue flees from a horrible fiance. Iroh saves the moon spirit's life. Yue joins Iroh and Zuko on their journey through the Earth Kingdom, and finds that she and Zuko have much more in common than she ever expected.
Relationships: Yue & Iroh (Avatar), Yue/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 116
Kudos: 575





	1. The Hidden Princess and the Lost Prince (or: Yue makes two new friends)

**Author's Note:**

> Zuko and Yue: both have strong sense of duty, are underestimated, born into royalty with high expectations, want what's best for their people  
> me: hnnnnnngh..... InTerAct  
> Plus like..... the sun/moon dichotomy man. I Can't Not Write It.

Yue loves her father. She loves her home. She loves her people. She understands that being a woman - a princess no less - comes with responsibilities and expectations. She is to marry, to produce an heir, and support her chosen husband as he leads the Northern Water Tribe. Her duty is to know her place.

Her place, according to her father, is to marry Hahn. Yue failed him at birth, born a daughter instead of a son. She sees this every time he looks at her, every time a council member makes a pitying remark, and she desperately wants to make it up to him. Yue, however, hates Hahn.

Despite living in a nation at war, Yue never hated anyone before she met him. At first their meetings were just coincidental; her father and Hahn's father, Haku, were friends from childhood, close to the point of family. Hahn started tagging along with Haku around when Yue turned fourteen. When Haku and her father wandered off together, Yue was forced to associate with him. 

For the first year, he was just rude. Stupid, also, and full of himself. But the city was filled with men who were full of themselves, with people who were rude, and idiocy alone wasn't an excuse to dislike someone. So Yue tolerated it as she was expected. She hosted him, she fed him, she poured him his drinks and cleaned up after he left, like a proper Water Tribe woman. And Hahn, knowing full well that the social rules dictated she do so, felt no need to make it easy on her. He ate messily, left things on the floors and tables, spilled his drinks and stared until she cleaned them. 

Yue was a Water Tribe princess. She tolerated him. She adapted. Like a flowing fjord, she continued her duties without fail. Resentment festered inside her, but how she felt didn't matter. Hahn was a man, and she was not.

When she turned fifteen the occasional, awful visits became more frequent. Her father and Haku often whispered to each other, eyeing her and Hahn as she cleaned up after him and nodded in all the right places when he bragged. When they were alone he only grew more demanding, emboldened by the restrictions her position placed on her. 

Yue will never forget the day he first touched her. 

She had leaned over to put down a plate of steaming sea prunes for him to eat, as he always complained until she made something. Just as she set the plate down, he reached out and grabbed her breast.

It was only a second, but Yue jerked back immediately. Her face burned. Her eyes watered. Thankfully her many layers of clothing prevented direct contact, but she was still horrified and ashamed. She had the sudden urge to punch him, but women were not allowed to be violent. Disregarding her responsibilities as a host, she rushed away, glad to see Hahn's face pale as he realized he'd surely be punished. 

Yue waited in her chambers, alone, until Hahn and Haku left. She didn't wish to embarrass Hahn's father by mentioning Hanh's disrespect in front of him. He was a decent man. It took hours for them to leave. She could hear Haku ask Hahn where Yue was, that they were "usually inseparable," but she didn't hear Hahn's response. 

"Father," she rushed to him the moment they were gone. "Father, I... something happened today." Yue wished her mother was here, or Yugoda. Her father loved her dearly, but talking about this to him was shamefully uncomfortable. Her mother was the one who understood the pressures of being a princess, and Yugoda had taught her healing despite Yue's lack of bending, had explained her first blood, had always been open to her. Not that her father wasn't open, but women's issues and men's issues were kept strictly separate, and he struggled with crossing the divide.

Her father brushed a thumb across her cheek. "Are you alright? Do you feel ill?" That was always his first concern. Her birth, her weakness, had frightened him, and those fears intensified after her mother passed.

"No, Father. It's just - Hahn, he... he _touched_ me, today. He grabbed my chest."

There. It was out, it was said, Hahn would be punished, and if she was lucky she'd never have to see him again. 

" _What?_ " Her father said. "No, Hahn wouldn't do something like that. Are you sure?"

...This was not what she expected. The thought never crossed her mind that her father would defend Hahn. " _Yes_ , Father I'm sure, he _grabbed_ at me, at m-my breasts."

Her father frowned. "I can't imagine that boy behaving so crassly. I'll talk to his father." Yue slumped as much as allowed, tension sliding from her body like waves withdrawing from a shore, and foolishly let herself believe that was the end of it.

Her father approached her the next day, and told her that Hahn had confessed to a moment of weakness, that he hadn't even known what he was doing until he did it, that he was very sorry and would never do it again. "Men are like that at his age. They can't control their urges well. Don't be too hard on him."

Yugoda said something similar when Yue asked her advice. "Boys will be boys. He'll grow out of it." 

Hahn was never punished for his behavior, and that only made it worse. He squeezed her backside when she walked by, he fondled her breasts, he pulled at her hair. Never when anyone else was around, of course. Yue told her father when he groped her breasts the second time, but he insisted it must have been accidental, and after that she stopped trying, resigned to the whirlpool of hopelessness drowning her. Her father wasn't listening, or maybe he didn't care. 

The thought chilled her.

"Yue, Haku and I have been talking. When you turn of marrying age next month, you and Hahn will be wed." The way he says this, as if it's great news, is a slap to the face. He fastens a betrothal necklace Hahn must have carved around her neck. It's beautiful, and Yue hates it.

She smiles but she wanted to sob. This is a common practice Yue employs: smiling through fury or frustration or terror or sadness, knowing that she can't change what's to come no matter how hard she struggles. Like the ocean, Yue must adapt. She could do this. For her people, she must. 

This was the thought she clung to, right up until Hahn nipped at her ear with the coldest smile Yue had ever seen. It was cruel. He knew how uncomfortable he made her, and he was enjoying it.

True terror gripped her heart.

Only a year ago, Yue wholeheartedly believed that her father would protect her from any threat. That he'd cherish and defend her to his dying breath. But with a frigid wave of clarity, Yue realizes Hahn is a danger her father would never acknowledge.

Her father loves her. Yue knows this. Her father is going to marry her off to the man who made her life hell for almost two years. Yue knows this also. 

Yue would rather die than live the rest of her life serving Hahn. Freezing to death in the tundra beyond the walls of the city would be better than enduring Hahn's behavior. He frightens her. Yue genuinely fears for her safety, imagining a life serving him, obligated to him even more than she is now.

No matter how strong the guilt of being born a woman, of how much less she could do for her people because of it, it's not enough to keep her here with Hahn.

At first she contemplates suicide, but finding her body would devastate her father, and it would be disrespectful to Tui, to take the life they had given her. The only other option is running away.

( _There are times to push, to fight, and there are times to pull away_ ).

So Yue abandons her responsibilities, her people, her father, and runs.

-

"Avatar, when my daughter was born, the spirits gave me a vision. For some reason, I can no longer remember what it was."

-

When she was young, her father allowed her on multiple trading voyages along the northern coasts of the Earth Kingdom, so that Yue could learn about the exchange of goods and local Earth Kingdom government. 

Yue uses this knowledge to sail to the closest port she can. Her pack, stuffed with clothing, dried foods, a full waterskin, and an ornate bone dagger in case of emergencies, sits snug against her back. 

She keeps her hair styled the same, but her fancy jewelry and hair pins are stowed away to sell later. It's wisest not to attract attention to her wealth. 

On her sixteenth birthday, she gets a job at a beachside resort. The pale pinks and reds of the fabrics give away the target visitors, but Yue wants the experience of working a physical job.

The first night she sleeps there, she has nightmares of burning koi fish and a bloody moon. Yue wakes up choking on the smell of salt water.

-

Zhao sneers and drops the moon-white koi back in its pond. The Dragon of the West strikes him down the second Zhao's arm moves to try again.

-

Yue can't explain how she knows the old man that washes up on the sand, but she's overwhelmed with gratitude and a sense of _(must repay the debt)_ determination when she meets his eyes. He introduces himself as Iroh, and his nephew as Zuko. Yue has an extensive education in politics as well as mathematics and literature, so she recognizes the names (or at least Iroh's) as members of the Fire Nation royal family. 

This changes nothing. The urge to repay her(?) debt remains strong. When the two men flee the resort, she follows and offers her aid.

"And what is your name, fine lady?" Iroh asks, all tense smiles and coiled muscles under his robe.

"My name is Yue," she responds, and with the insistence of ( _absolute honesty trust great debt_ ) transparency she continues, "Princess of the Northern Water Tribe. You saved the Moon Spirit," how does she know this? "So I am in your debt."

-

The three of them are royalty. This means they have no idea how to forage, or survive in the wilderness, or hunt. Yue is a dead-weight. Iroh keeps getting sidetracked by plants, and Zuko spends hours fishing only to come back with a single minnow impaled on the pole.

In the north, when men were frustrated, it fell on the women to subtly boost their ego. This wasn't a real rule, more of an unspoken agreement that sullen men were more annoying to deal with. If asked, a Northern Water Tribe man would deny this, mainly because he has no idea it happens. "You impaled such a small target! That must take skill." 

The minnow stares, dead-eyed, from the top of his spear. It does not seem impressed.

Zuko doesn't preen and justify his failure to himself (and her). Instead he snarls and accuses her of patronizing him. Yue is mortified, because hearing him say that forces her to realize that the way she's been taught to treat men is pretty patronizing, and also because Iroh ate a strange bush while unsupervised and poisoned himself. 

"We need to find a healer," Yue says.

"I thought _you_ were a healer," Zuko growls at her like a feral polar bear-dog. Yue feels supremely inadequate. The healing she was taught involved warming people up from hypothermia, amputating frost-bitten limbs, and using the three types of plants that could grow near the North Pole. 

"I was taught Water Tribe methods only... I've never seen these plants before. I'm sorry." 

They wander until they find a town, and a healer takes pity on them and saves Iroh's life. She even teaches Yue what she knows about local field medicine. Afterwards, she invites them to dinner. The roast duck is good - Yue thinks so, at least. There are no ducks back home to compare to. Zuko disappears with Song and comes back looking torn. 

Not torn enough to opt out of robbing their savior, though. 

It's not Yue's place to question him, so she looks to Iroh, who only shakes his head in disappointment. 

Yue is too guilty to sleep well that night. 

-

Zuko does not take well to begging. Iroh does, with a flexibility that inspires Yue. Humbling herself on the side of a road isn't too difficult after dealing with Hahn, after being taught subservience her whole life. She drops the occasional, shy smile at susceptible-looking men, complete with a demure aversion of eye contact that says _I'm so vulnerable, please handsome sir, spare a coin for a helpless maiden?_

It works. 

Camping out in the forest that night, she tries her hand at calming the snapping lion-turtle that is Zuko. "You're handling this well," she says, and it isn't empty flattery this time. Yue can tell he's struggling, but he hasn't cracked and skewered a man with his swords yet. That's more than she could expect of some men back home. 

"What do _you_ know," Zuko bristles, still seething over the man that harassed his uncle, swung his swords at him while making Iroh sing. Yue was disgusted by his behavior as well, but let it wash over and past her like fog. There wasn't much she could have done.

"When that man mocked Iroh, I could tell you were furious, but you didn't strike him. If I were a man, I'm not sure I would've tolerated that." Yue isn't sure why the two of them are roughing it as beggars, but she guesses the subject is sensitive and avoids breaching it.

Zuko blinks at her. His glimmering gold eyes are confused, in an aggressive, teen-prince-with-serious-life-problems sort of way. "If you were a man...? What does that have to do with anything?"

Iroh hands each of them a cup of fresh tea, brewed from reliably-identified plants this time. "Allow me to explain. In the Northern Water Tribe, women are not allowed to fight. They are discouraged from any displays of aggression or violence, and are expected to provide support from the sidelines only."

"Is that not how things are done in the Fire Nation?" Yue is genuinely curious. Knowledge about different cultures is key for a princess, even though she's a runaway. 

" _No_ , that's _stupid_." Zuko has zero tact. Sometimes, Yue wonders how he ever survived growing up embroiled in politics. "That halves the size of your army. Why wouldn't you want all the fighters you can get?" 

"Women are weaker than men, so women are to manage children and domestic chores, while the men fight and hunt." Zuko gives Yue an incredulous glance. 

" _Weaker!?_ You Water Tribes are crazy!" 

Yue is torn between offended on her people's behalf, flattered at Zuko's complete befuddlement at the notion women are weak, and envious other societies don't have the same restrictions hers does. 

Since it's rude to not reply, she settles for propping her head against one hand. "I'm jealous," she admits. "I used to wish I could learn how to fight, at least to defend my people." The confession tastes bitter on her tongue. Who is she to find her way of life wanting? She's a princess; she'd been given more freedom than any other woman in her tribe, how could she complain when others have even less? 

"I... know how to fight with a knife," Zuko says, stretching out the words like they're stuck to his tongue and staring at the bone dagger in her pack. "If you want. I could show you. Some tips."

Yue is thrilled but hesitant. She's struggling with enough guilt after running away. Would her conscience be able to handle betraying the traditions of her home?

( _But the Earth Kingdom isn't home, and Yue must change - adapt - pull from what she knows and push forward to survive_ ). 

"I would be honored."

-

Yue nicknames the ostrich-horse Pakku. Pakku The Ostrich-Horse enjoys dried grass, nipping at fingers, and shrieking when he sees the sunrise. Yue dotes on him constantly, trying to make up for stealing him. 

Zuko also dotes on him, but (not quite) subtly, like he doesn't want anyone to notice. Of course, both Yue and Iroh do, but they let him think he's getting away with it. They also let him think they don't notice when he sneaks away during the night, dressed in black with a theatre mask covering his face, and that they don't know he's stealing all the stuff he comes back with. An expensive tea set for Iroh, a leather sheath for Yue's knife, fancy dried meats and pastries and bags of money. 

While it's sweet Zuko wants to provide for them, Yue worries he'll attract unwanted attention, and stealing isn't something she's comfortable with. Who knows what stories the people Zuko robbed had? Maybe they were on their way to sell that fancy tea set to afford medicine for their children, or maybe the knife sheath was a birthday gift from a dead loved one, or-

Zuko slaps her knife out of her hand. "Pay attention," he huffs, positioning his own knife's hilt against his palm. It's a striking green in the sunlight, and Yue can't help but admire the craftmanship. 

Yue bends down and grabs her own blade, shifting into the stance Zuko has been drilling her on. Her legs are wide, feet planted, body positioned to attack or defend. 

Zuko lunges forward and swipes at her. Yue drifts back, then pushes off her heel and makes her own attempt at an attack. Zuko kicks her arm off course and knocks the knife out of her hands again with his wrist. 

Yue frowns. "Sorry," she says, ashamed she's wasting Zuko's time with her shoddy skills. What was she thinking, a woman learning to fight? Of course she couldn't match up to him.

"Your stance is better than before," Zuko offers. Yue would think he's placating her, but Zuko doesn't sugarcoat things or soften his blows. He doesn't regard her as inherently weaker, needing to be insulated from reality. Neither does Iroh. 

It makes her feel... better about herself? Not that she ever disliked herself, it's just that living in the Water Tribe there were so many contrasting responsibilities and restrictions - lead a tribe, bow to men; protect her people, wait for others to protect her - where as here she could simply decide to do something, like learn to fight with a knife, and no one stopped her. If Zuko says she's improving, then she is. He's a terrible liar. Maybe it's shallow, to have her opinion swayed so easily, but it's difficult for Yue to care.

She's finally growing beyond her previous limitations.

-

Yue sells most of her royal jewelry in the next town they reach, and the money is enough to afford an inn and a hot meal for the night. It isn't much, just rice and salted pig-chicken, but after days of walking it tastes like the finest sea prune stews. 

Zuko isn't as pleased as Yue.

"We shouldn't have to sell our belongings just to eat," he says, glowering into his bowl. 

"It's alright, I brought those hairpins with the intent to sell them." Yue attempts to placate him.

"Well you shouldn't have had to! Those were some of the only things you had left of _home_ , and you had to trade them to some greedy merchant!" 

This is obviously about more than what Zuko was saying. Yue knew she ought to tread carefully. "While it is sad to part with them, I'll always be grateful that they provided me the means to make more memories with you and Iroh." Add a gentle smile, wait to see if effective. Calming men down was a talent of Water Tribe women.

Zuko flushes and aggressively spoons rice into his mouth. Behind him, Iroh shoots her a goofy smile and a thumbs up. 

The next morning he hands her a leather notebook. "For last night," he says, avoiding eye contact. Yue beams and thanks him, pretending not to know it was stolen despite the guilt churning in her gut, and takes comfort in the fact that her words had made some difference.

-

Whatever feelings Yue's miniature speech imparts to him, they aren't enough to keep Zuko from leaving her and Iroh. They confronted him about stealing, and instead of defending his actions he just got up and left. And took Pakku with him. Yue can't help but feel like she didn't try hard enough, didn't say what she should have. Now his uncle is forced to worry about him from afar, and it's clear the stress is getting to the man.

Yue is worried and guilty enough as it is, but at night she dreams of racing bolts of blue and frozen golden eyes. She can't shake the foreboding feeling that ( _repay the debt prevent the pain_ ) something is coming.

-

Iroh and Yue's covert stalking of Zuko leads them to the smallest, loudest 12-year-old Yue has ever seen. She's Earth Kingdom, an impressive bender, blind, and _so tiny_. 

The girl - who's name is Toph - reminds her of those tiny poodle-monkeys she's spotted Earth Kingdom nobles carrying around; minuscule but frothing at the mouth from highly-concentrated rage. 

Iroh makes Toph tea. Yue is painfully curious at how she bends blind, but asking about it is probably a faux paus. Instead she just sits in silence while Iroh bestows Toph with a dose of wisdom.

"Hey, what's wrong with you?" Toph asks just as they all finish the tea. Yue has no idea how to respond to such a blunt, crass question. 

"I - what?" 

"You look weird."

_Aren't you blind?_ Is what Yue wants to say. Instead what comes out is, "I'm sorry?"

"Is this related to how you knew we were nearby?" Iroh says, ever the diplomat, offering neutral ground between Toph's forward personality and Yue's reserved one.

Toph smirks. "Yeah. I see with my earth bending. But you," Toph jerks a pointed finger in Yue's direction. "Look like - like - two people at once? There's you, and then there's another you. What's up with that?"

Yue has no idea how to respond. She apologizes.

-

There's a fight in the abandoned village they track Zuko to. Iroh tells her to stay behind with Pakku, so she does, watching plumes of dirt and fire leap into the air from the edge of the village. Pakku pecks at her feet while Yue twists his reigns over and over in her hand. 

Iroh (and likely Zuko) are fighting and she's standing around without helping. If this were home she would sit by in her palace, warriors dying in her father's name while she did nothing. But this was the Earth Kingdom, and Iroh and Zuko aren't her subjects. 

She owes Iroh ( _her life_ ) so much. Yue can't wait safely while he endangers himself any longer. What if he's attacked? What about Zuko? 

What if she was already too late? 

( _Danger fire prevent the pain_ ).

She ties Pakku to the remains of a house and started running, knife ready. 

The scene she arrives to puts her fears to rest. Iroh and Zuko, along with Toph, two other children, and a boy her age, had cornered a Fire Nation girl that looked strikingly similar to Zuko. The situation was under control. Yue had been worried over nothing. 

The Fire Nation girl met her eyes for a split second, not long enough for Yue to register anything, save for a flash of recognition. The girl's eyes were a frigid gold, just like what she saw in her dreams. Then her hand struck toward Iroh, quicker that an eel-viper, launching a bolt of blue fire. Yue found herself running towards the flames, not even wholly aware of what she was doing.

( _The time for pulling away was over. It was time to_ push, _for Iroh's sake_ ).

"No!" Yue shouts, at the Fire Nation girl or at the fire or even at the idea Iroh could be hurt - she didn't know. The twin expressions of panic and fear on her companions' faces, the shock on the children's, the bland irritation in the girl's; they were the last things she knew before the flames struck her on the left of her rib cage, just above her stomach. There was a scream, and then there was nothing.

-

Yue's eyes flitted open, but she knew she wasn't awake. Above her was an endless expanse of ocean, churning and frothing. When she looked down, Yue saw nothing but a void: no stars, no moon, nothing. Just inky blackness. 

"Hello?" She called. She couldn't see anyone, but Yue had the strangest feeling she was being watched. "Is anyone-"

Yue fell. One moment the darkness held her weight, the next it fractured like thin ice and dropped her down.

Down.

_Down_.

A bunny-like spirit flew around her head on insect wings, glowing bright glacier blue. It chirped at her, patted her head, then floated away.

Her stomach was sore from the constant plummeting sensation. "Hello?! Please, I'm scared!"

Something wet grabbed her. Yue looked into the massive, expressionless ebony eyes of a koi fish, holding her with slimy human hands that looked as if they were made from bits and pieces of dead ocean life, oozing gore. " _Little Moon,_ " it said in her father's voice, rubbery lips lifting to show off rows and rows of different teeth: sharp and fiberous and flat and all layered against one another. " _I've come to bring you home._ "

Water gushed from its mouth. Soon there was no air left, just briny liquid. " _There you go,_ " said the fish, smiling to itself in satisfaction.

Yue screamed. 

-

The screaming is still happening when she wakes up in the real world, but it isn't hers. Her side hurts. She's felt pain before, but this is different in a horrible way, burning and stinging and also itching somehow. Yue tries to say something - anything - to beg for relief. All that comes out of her mouth is a croaking gasp. 

"Shut _up!_ " That's definitely Zuko. 

"Don't talk to my sister like that-"

"Guys, can't we calm down-"

"Zuko." Iroh's voice booms from above her. Yue realizes she's cradled against him. "Miss Katara's healing has worked. Yue is regaining consciousness." 

Blissfully, the arguing stops. Zuko's warm hand squeezes her own. "Yue? Are you awake?" 

The idea of answering with words sounded impossibly exhausting, so instead Yue says, "hmm." Then she realizes that if she's tired, she could just go to sleep. 

So she does.

-

"I'm giving you a special mission, Han."

"Chief?"

"Take a group of men, no more than three, and please. Find my daughter. Bring home your future wife."

Han grins.

-

The time between Yue passing out in Iroh's arms and waking up again is, blessedly, eldritch-ocean-monstrosity free. When she returns to consciousness, Yue is lying on a thin mat in a dilapidated hut, under every blanket Iroh and Zuko owned, as well as her own sleeping bag. Zuko has stuffed one of his shirts with grass to use as a pillow, and a damp rag is pressed against her hairline. Her hair is out of its usual style, draping down to the small of her back. For a split second, she thinks she sees the rabbit-insect from her dream watching her from the ceiling. She blinks, and it vanishes.

" _Nngh?"_ Yue says, because her mouth tastes beyond disgusting and she really doesn't want to get out of her cozy cocoon for a drink. Iroh is at her side in an instant, helping her sit up. The pain in her side remains, but Yue no longer feels like curling into a ball and melting away to escape it. 

Zuko approaches from her peripheral vision, holding a clay cup filled with steaming liquid. "I made you tea," he says, gently placing the cup in her hands. 

Yue takes a sip. The flavor is almost worse than being shot by fire; it's so bitter, she's forced to swallow rapidly just to get it down. There are bits of leaves floating in the cup that are burnt around the edges. 

Despite the atrocious taste, her mouth feels less like it was used to pickle ocean kumquats. "Thank you," Yue says, and she means it. The gesture was sweet. 

"I also have food cooking outside, it should be ready. I'll get you some." Off Zuko went, motivated by the intense need to take care of someone without knowing how to actually do so. Yue never thought Zuko could be so _doting_.

Iroh hands her another cup of tea, grabs the one Zuko had brewed her, and dumps it out the window. "I have yet to teach him the finer arts of tea brewing," he stage-whispers, winking. The tea Iroh gave her tastes stellar, and she drains the entire cup in one go. 

Zuko returns with a bowl of rice and vegetables. He looks so out of place, Yue can't help but take pity on him. "Thank you," she says again. "I appreciate it. How long has it been since the fight?" 

"Three days."

"You had an unfortunate meeting with the princess of the Fire Nation," Iroh explains. "Azula, Zuko's younger sister." 

That girl was family? And she'd tried to kill Iroh? "Oh. I... I'm glad you're both safe."

Iroh sits back against the wall of the hut. "The same goes for you. You should've seen Zuko, he held your hand the entire time Miss Katara healed you. It was very touching."

" _Uncle!_ "

Yue laughs. A real, unfiltered laugh. She's in pain and has just drank the worst tea to ever be brewed, but she's with her friends. They had obviously gone through a lot of work to make her comfortable. Zuko even cooked, which Yue didn't realize was possible. "Thank you," she repeats, because the amount of ( _success pride relief guilt_ ) gratitude swelling in her chest is just too much to properly convey. "I'm glad I'm here with you two. Thank you for everything." 

Iroh and Yue both notice Zuko's painfully obvious blush, but deign not to torture him anymore than necessary. After all, Zuko is about to attempt lightning.

It takes some convincing, but Iroh allows her to sit outside the hut and watch Zuko train. Zuko hovers at her side while she shuffles out the doorway, bringing a blanket for her when she rests against the outer wall. 

"Just don't. Move anywhere." Zuko looks at her as if she's about to take a running leap off a cliff. As if _she's_ the impulsive one. Although to be fair, she _had_ used herself as a human shield. 

Iroh explains the mechanics of lightning, which Yue eagerly listens to. Pure energy, flowing through the body... She's never seen firebending before, and the forms are vastly different than the waterbending she's seen. With water, the body is kept loose and flexible. Fire is stiff and direct.

Iroh shows Zuko the form. Zuko copies the form. Yue leans forward as much as she can, eager to see the result.

Zuko _explodes_.

Or, the crackling energy sparking from his fingers explodes. Yue flinches at the sudden noise, winces, then winces again, because the wince hurt just as much as the flinch. Zuko is thrown backwards, skidding across the dirt. Only Iroh is unaffected. It seems he expected this.

"Zuko, are you okay?" Yue calls. He doesn't respond. Instead he jerks upwards, onto his feet, and goes through the motions again. His frustration is written in his movements, and Yue isn't surprised when the lightning explodes again.

And again.

And again. 

Covered in ash, dust, and scrapes, Zuko punches the air. "Why can't I _get_ this?! It keeps blowing up in my face!" 

"I think it's amazing you can combust the air in front of you. I've never seen bending like that." Yue is telling the absolute truth - she's genuinely impressed. At the fact that he can blow up air, and at the fact he keeps bouncing up to try again. His tenacity is a marvel.

This is not what Zuko wants to hear. "What do _you_ know. You're not even a _bender!"_

"That's why I think it's amazing." The sight of her sitting in dirt, hair undone, wrapped in a blanket because she's running a slight fever after being shot by his little sister to save his uncle, frowning after he shouted at her, is successful in leeching the anger from his voice. He sags, pinching between his eyes. 

"Why don't I teach you a technique even your sister doesn't know," Iroh offers. "I invented it myself, studying waterbenders." 

Zuko eagerly latches on. Then he storms off when Iroh refuses to shoot lightning at him, which speaks volumes about his home life. Zuko genuinely expected Iroh to be comfortable risking electrocuting his nephew. Iroh! The kindest man in the world! 

If Zuko saw his uncle risking killing him for training as perfectly acceptable, how did the rest of his family treat him? Adding in Azula's lack of hesitance attacking Iroh, Yue could safely say she's glad he's not home. 

Zuko stays out for a while, despite the thunderstorm that kicks up. Yue stares out from the single window in the hut, worried he could be stuck in a muddy ditch or electrocuted by natural lightning. She can't stare too hard though, or else she'll start to see strange creatures watching from the dark: deer with glowing eyes and mice with teeth longer than their bodies. They don't look away when she meets their eyes. 

When Zuko returns it's dark, he's soaking wet, and he stares at the floor with broken eyes. 

Yue hands him his blanket from her pile while Iroh offers him a cup of tea and some dinner. A conversation goes by in glances from Zuko to Iroh and back again.

"Sorry. For yelling at you," Zuko says. "I just- I don't want this to happen again. If I talk to you like that again, uh, you know you can yell back. Don't- you don't have to take it."

Is he giving her permission to _chastise_ him? She knows she doesn't need it, but Yue has never felt comfortable arguing with Zuko. She left that to Iroh, feeling she had no right to go against him when she didn't know his situation. That, and years of being raised to never openly question male leadership. It's odd, being told that she could raise her voice at him. Doing so would be used as proof women were too emotional to handle disagreements back home, but Zuko talks as if it's defending herself.

A barrier breaks. Yue abruptly feels closer to him. She doesn't know what changed, only that it has. Leaning against him, Yue finds one of his hands and clutches it tightly in her own. "I'm sorry for worrying you. I understand why you yelled, just. Try not to next time."

"Yeah. Okay."

-

Iroh has a friend who makes fake identification. This is good. The friend lives in the Si Wong desert. This is awful. A year ago she lived in the North Pole, where the height of summer meant a never-setting sun and only three layers of clothes. That was inconvenient. But this-

_This_ -

This is _miserable_. 

There's no water. Just sand, endless dunes of sand. The heat is oppressive, the sun merciless, the air dry as the ground. Yue strips to her lightest underclothes, just a sleeveless blue tunic with white borders, and she's still sweating like an ice cube over a bonfire. Her bandages are itchy with sweat and her scalp is hot enough to sear meat, despite tying up her hair again.

Zuko and Iroh just seem mildly irritated. 

Iroh's friend lives in an oasis town, except the oasis is a chunk of ice dripping droplet after droplet into the sand underneath. Yue wants to lie against it, to press her face to it, to crawl into it and let the coolness chase away the hot air. She just settles for a wistful gaze. 

"Some rundown shack? Really?" Zuko has low expectations of the town, partly compounded by the unflattering wanted posters of him and Iroh posted on a notice board. The restaurant (?) they enter looks no better than the rest of the town, tattered cloth serving as a door and a sandy floor splattered with mud and hay.

"Don't judge it too quickly," Iroh says in that low tone that implies there's more going on. 

The inside has a counter with stools, a few tables, and an old man at a pai sho board that Iroh made a beeline for. Zuko makes an irritated noise at the back of his throat, no doubt ready to boil over with frustration.

Iroh smiles, sits down, and starts playing. Yue knows how to play pai sho - Yugoda taught her - but she doesn't recognize the strategy Iroh is using. He starts with the white lotus tile, a normal move, but then slaps tiles on the board at random with no care for strategy. 

Or it seemed random, before Yue realizes Iroh and the old man had made the outline of a lotus. "It is an honor to meet a grand master," the old man says. There's something here that Yue isn't privy to, an irksome, familiar feeling that reminds her of watching her father enter council meetings without her. Zuko seems just as put out, standing at Yue's side. 

"Are you done _playing games?"_

The harsh tone is unnecessary, and Yue almost says so, before two men demanded Iroh and Zuko come with them. Bounty hunters. 

"You think you're going to turn them in and get all that gold?" The old man shouts. Yue doesn't know what his goal is, but from his cadence it's clear he has one. Zuko doesn't pick up on it, instead turning to Iroh and yelling at him with a desperate voice that makes Yue's heart ache. 

The second the word "gold" tumbles out of the old man's mouth, every shady character inside - which is everyone - turns their way. It's an instant riot, men fighting to get the reward all to themselves. The bounty hunters are lost in the scuffle, and Yue, Zuko, and Iroh sneak out to the old man's flower shop. 

How the man grows flowers in a desert, Yue doesn't know.

Iroh and the old man disappear into a back room, leaving Zuko and Yue alone with the flowers. 

"What do you think they're doing back there?" Zuko asks after smelling all the flowers nearby. It's kind of cute to watch. 

"I don't know. It's funny, this reminds me of home. Father and the council never allowed me in meetings. I'd wait by the door and listen through the wall." Yue smiles despite herself. The memories are bittersweet.

"Why weren't you allowed?" 

"Only men can be on the council or hold the title chief."

Zuko rolls his eyes. "You Water Tribes are so backwards."

"In some ways. In others, I believe we're ideal." Yue remembers when she broke her wrist as a young child. She'd slipped on a stairway, shoes wet from the oasis water. 

(She swam in the pond with the koi often, before she grew too big to play with them without taking up the entire pond. The fish would playfully nibble her fingers and toes, rub against her like baby penguin-seals. Only the chief's family was allowed in the oasis, so no one ever disturbed her. To this day, it was Yue and the koi's secret).

When she fell, the bone broke through her skin. Her father carried her to Yugoda, frantic - people joked about it afterwards, the chief of the North running down the streets, shouting Yugoda's name, sweetly concerned for his child - and she was healed within the hour and sent home with a snack. Yue can't imagine seeing someone suffering and demanding money to help them. It goes against everything the Water Tribes teach. 

And yet, in the Earth Kingdom, money is required for healers.

Zuko looks at her, disbelieving, so Yue changes the subject. "What's the Fire Nation like? Is it as hot as it is here?"

"Not quite. The air is more humid. And there's plenty of water. There's food there that actually tastes like something."

Despite the oppressive heat and the dull sting of her burn, Yue laughs. She's not sure what's so funny. "You should eat Water Tribe food. We've got plenty of taste." Water Tribe food is mostly pickled or dried; everything either has a salty overtone or a sour aftertaste, and only fish is eaten fresh. Other meats were tough from the preservation process, and the few plants had a mouthfeel ranging from mush to firm mush. Yue knows her traditional cuisine is an acquired taste - the handful of Earth Kingdom dignitaries that visited said as much - but growing up without any other options makes even the fattiest slice of leopard-seal jerky gourmet.

The face Zuko makes implies he knows full well the type of flavor Yue is talking about. "Is it spicy?"

Yue winks.

"No thanks."

-

The ferry station to reach Ba Sing Se is perhaps the most crowded place Yue has ever seen. She can't walk three steps without jostling shoulders or squishing toes. The docks are built in a natural cave that keeps the temperature nice and cool, but it reeks of sweat and feces. There are babies screaming and children crying and adults just staring vacantly at the stone floor. 

"Three tickets to Ba Sing Se," Iroh says, flashing their identification at the woman in charge with a wink. Zuko slinks against Yue, mortified. 

"Such a ladykiller," Yue whispers, just to watch Zuko jolt and stare at her in horror, as if she was going to try and become his new aunt any minute. 

The ferry is built differently than any boat Yue had seen. It's tall, tall enough to have entire floors inside for storage. Instead of wind or bending, it's moved by a sort of propeller on the side of the boat that spins in the water. 

Iroh buys himself and Yue fun straw hats as they board.

Refugees sit on the deck, spreading blankets out to avoid touching the greasy floor. Boat workers hand out bowls of... food, but mostly leave the passengers to their own devices. Shadows whip past underwater, forcing Yue to keep her eyes up.

Zuko takes one bite of the food and chokes. He promptly tosses his dish into the water. "This is disgusting!"

Yue hates to agree - it feels ungrateful - but Zuko isn't wrong. The texture is unnervingly soft, the flavor bland with a hint of sourness, and every so often something crunches between her teeth. Is it meat? Rice? Stew? Whatever it is, it must be weeks old. 

"What do you say we get some real food?"

A boy her age with puffy hair, followed by a younger boy wearing a wide hat and short (girl? Boy?) person with face paint strolls up to them. His body language screams self-confidence, the smirk on his face and his sharp eyes putting her on edge. It's not fair of her to make the comparison, but something about him reminds her of Han. Yue is immediately on guard, as is Zuko, but Iroh seems relaxed as ever. 

"I heard the captain of the ship is eating like a king, while we refugees get scraps. Why don't we liberate some for us common folk?" 

Yue isn't comfortable with stealing. What if they're caught? Zuko has no such reservations, so he sneaks off with the trio while she and Iroh remain on the deck. Yue pulls out her notebook and shows Iroh her latest poetry while they wait.

"I see a common theme in your work. Do you often visit with spirits?"

"What do you mean?" Her poems are mostly based off of dreams. Once Yue had a vivid dream where she was hovering in the sky, surveying the earth turn ever so slowly. She still can't quite capture it in poetry. Strange animals talking with her were common, as well as giant versions of her koi friends swimming with her. On occasion, even awake, she imagined odd creatures wandering around. A few waved at her, or beckoned her closer. Then she'd blink, and they'd vanish.

Iroh gifts her with a gentle smile that makes her preen. It was so much like a parent's, Yue couldn't help but crave the validation it gives her. "I've spent much time in the spirit world. What you write about sounds strikingly similar to what I see there."

Much like when Toph mentioned her "looking weird," Yue has no idea what to say. Failing to come up with a response, she shifts the topic back to Iroh. "Why do you spend so much time there?"

"After my son died, I searched for a way to speak to him again. Now, I simply visit for the company." 

That isn't the answer she expected. Yue assumed it was some classic Iroh mysticism, like _when you reach my age, it happens_ , not _my son died_. "Iroh, I'm... I'm so sorry."

Iroh waves his hand. "It's alright. There's nothing that can be done now. But how did someone so young find herself touched by the spirits?"

Is that really what Yue is? She knows what Tui did for her, but the idea that the animals she sees when she drifts off - or stares too hard into the distance - were spirits seems too fantastical to believe. Iroh knows more than she does, though, so Yue guesses Tui's benevolence is what "touched" her. 

This is the first time Yue tells someone the story of her birth. Back home, it was common knowledge, almost legend; how the daughter of the chief was blessed by one of their patron spirits and given life.

Iroh takes her explanation in stride. "I'm glad you're here with us," he says. The awe and reverence her people displayed when mentioning Tui isn't there, and in a way it's refreshing. Yue often felt like an imposter when people discussed her connection to the moon spirit. She was just a baby, all she'd done was lay there and not die. When Iroh responds, he's seeing _her_ , not Tui.

Zuko and the three other refugees return with steaming-hot bowls of dumplings and broth. Yue stands to hand out everyone's bowls, like a proper host, only sitting back down when Zuko shoots her an odd look. "What are you doing?"

He serves her a bowl as he asks, like it's normal for the man to serve the woman food, and she can't help the way her face heats. "I - back home, it's the woman's job to serve food. I didn't even think before - this is embarrassing." 

That look returns in Zuko's eyes, the _wow the Water Tribe is a bunch of savages_ look. Yue doesn't like seeing it, doesn't enjoy knowing her friend has such negative opinions on her people, but elects not to say anything. 

"Yeah, I kinda remember my mom doing the same thing," the girl who helped steal food, Smellerbee(?) says, chewing open-mouthed. Zuko startles. 

"My mom too," the older boy pipes up. He has atrocious table manners, just like the girl. She thinks his name is Jet...? "I guess it's an Earth Kingdom thing - but you don't look Earth. Water Tribe?"

Yue nods. "Yes, I'm from the North."

"The North?! What are you doing here? Isn't the Northern Water Tribe supposed to be a stronghold like Ba Sing Se?" Jet keeps chewing on a piece of grass. It's distracting. Why is he doing it? Is he eating it? 

"I-" Yue pauses. She's never told anyone her specific reasons for leaving. Would they think she was overreacting? Would Iroh and Zuko take Han's side, like her father and Yugoda? 

No. Zuko and Iroh thought her serving dumplings was odd. Surely they wouldn't see Han's behavior as appropriate?

But wasn't that what she thought about her father?

"I," Yue tries again. Honestly, she wants to tell someone the whole story. She desperately needs people she cares about to say she isn't in the wrong. "There's a boy back home, and he- he kept touching me no matter how much I begged him to stop. No one believed me when I said what he was doing, not even my father, and then- see, marriages are arranged in the North, and my father and the boy's father are childhood friends, so my father arranged for me to marry him and I couldn't- I refuse to live bound to him, so I. Ran away." She stares at the wooden deck the entire time she speaks, imagining their faces twisting with scorn as they realize she abandoned safety and a loving family over something so stupid. Saying it out loud leaves her feeling small and entitled. Yue has no idea what the three fellow passengers' tales are, nor why Zuko and Iroh are fugitives. Surely, her minor discomfort pales in comparison?

A cracking noise loud enough to _feel_ splits the air. Yue jumps, turns to the source. Zuko's bowl is sitting in shards between his hands, fragments spilling from the edges of the break. Iroh frowns at the mess, worried Zuko cut himself, but his eyes are focused on Yue. His amber gaze is so understanding Yue can't help but let a few tears drop. The relief is overwhelming. Iroh is on her side.

"What's his name," Zuko grinds out, words minced like they went through a flour mill.

"It doesn't matter."

" _What_ is his _name_." 

"...Hahn. His name is Hahn." 

Zuko is boring holes into the ruined bowl with his stare, to the point Yue is honestly worried he'll set it on fire. Iroh gently sets a hand on her shoulder, looking to be about to impart some advice, or reassurance, when-

"Damn. That sucks," Jet speaks up. His tone is flippant but his eyes are empathetic. 

"Ew! If a guy did that to me, I'd knock him out," Smellerbee punches a fist into her palm. "You ever see that guy again, you come tell me!" 

The other boy nods sagely.

Yue sobs out a laugh. "I will, thank you."

-

Parting at the station in Ba Sing Se has Yue swimming in a myriad of emotions. Excitement to have reached their destination, to be able to live in one place, make a home. Trepidation at the size and the foreign smells and colors and streets. Reluctance to leave her new acquaintances from the ship in case they never found each other again in the massive city. 

Iroh buys tea at the station. They say their goodbyes to Smellerbee and Jet and Longshot (Yue and Smellerbee hug; Smellerbee insists she'll look them up once they're settled. Smellerbee is the first girl friend she's made that's her age and not constrained by status differences. It's exciting). Jet tries to recruit Zuko to join some sort of club, which Zuko adamantly refuses. 

Yue understands his reluctance to forge friendships. He's the prince of an enemy nation, and those kids did not look like fans of fire benders in general, let alone the royal family. It'd be exhausting, playing friends while knowing if they knew the truth, they'd hate him.

The first thing they do in the city is find work. Naturally, it's at a tea shop. A struggling one, going on the lack of customers. 

Iroh starts going through proper brewing techniques with the owner, a wiry man named Pao. Yue distracts herself by going through the business books. 

There are a lot of math errors...

Before she realizes it, she's gone through the last month of purchases, fixing each calculation, writing the correct work in the notebook Zuko gave her. 

"Ah, young lady, what are you doing with my budget book?" 

Yue startles. "Oh, I was just noticing, you spend an average of thirty yuan more than you need to per month for your jasmine shipment. See this calculation? You carried the four to the hundred, not to the ten."

Pao blinks. "You... know algebra? Did you attend a university?" 

"Ah, something like that." 

"Please!" Pao handed her the records. "Fix my ledger!" 

Yue spends the afternoon going through his math behind the counter while Iroh brews and Zuko takes orders. It's comfortable. Just the scratch of her pencil against the soft paper of her notebook, Iroh and Zuko chatting in the background, the occasional customer being blown away by the sudden increase in tea quality. 

After dark, once Pao closes the shop, they head to their new home: a tiny apartment only a few blocks away. It's smaller than her room back at the resort she'd worked at, and coated in the same fine layer of coal dust and mud that settles on every surface of the lower ring. Iroh buys flowers to decorate, and excitedly cooks up dinner.

"We made it!" Yue cheers, clinking her bowl of rice noodles and vegetables against Iroh's and Zuko's. "I'm so happy!"

"This marks the beginning of a new chapter in our lives," Iroh says, pouring everyone tea. 

Zuko picks at his dinner. He's obviously frustrated. The mood sours.

"I'm sorry, Zuko. I know you'd rather be home. Let me know if there's anything I can do that would make this less... awful." Yue feels genuinely guilty Zuko is struggling. She'd chosen to leave home, but Zuko? Something told her it hadn't been a choice. 

Zuko grunts. 

"Can I ask...? Why are you and Iroh so far from home?" 

Iroh sighs into his food. Zuko flinches. "My brother is not... a kind man." 

"I spoke out of turn. I disrespected my father. I was punished." The way Zuko speaks, like he was reciting facts from a textbook, eyes far away, makes Yue's skin crawl. No matter what, Zuko is always passionate when he speaks. He feels deeply, and it's reflected in his tone. But now? There's nothing. Emptiness. Forced apathy.

Yue purses her lips. "I think," she starts, despite every fiber of her being telling her she had no place - no right - to give her opinion. "Whatever happened, whatever you did... you deserved better. You deserve better."

Zuko stands and flees to bed without another word. 

-

In her dream, Yue found herself standing in a rolling field of grass. The field stretched on as far as she could see, hill after hill coated in yellow-green plants that waved in the breeze like water rippling in the wind. The air shimmered, surreal, swaying along with the grass. She recalled what Iroh had said on the ferry.

"Hello? Am- am I in the spirit world?" Her voice echoed outwards. The grass near her rustled. Yue's heartbeat skyrocketed. 

A spirit jumped up from their hiding spot. They were a deep blue, like the underside of an ancient glacier. They were shaped like a rabbit, but with insect wings and antennae. 

Wait. 

"I've met you before," Yue murmured. "You were there when I was hurt."

The rabbit-spirit chirped at her and patted her head. Thunder clapped above, despite the perfectly-clear sky. The very air darkened, shifting gradually until Yue realized she wasn't in a field at all, but the bottom of the ocean. The swaying grass was seaweed, and the shimmering air was water. 

Light radiated from the rabbit-spirit's body, the way sunlight trickles through thick ice. They pointed behind her, and Yue turned. 

And gasped. 

" _Hello Little Moon,_ " the koi fish with her father's voice and too many teeth floated in front of her. Unlike before, no horrid hands crafted from the scraps of sea life push out from its gills. 

Yue swallowed. Noticed she was breathing despite her location. Told herself it didn't exactly hurt her last time. "Are you... a spirit?" 

" _Oh Little Moon, do you not recognize me? The yang to your yin? The pull to your push?"_ Its voice spread through the water. Yue felt it in her chest, in her limbs, in her gut, buzzing. 

Memories crashed to the forefront of her mind like waves breaking against fjords: swimming with the koi in the oasis, reading about Tui and La, the black koi fish gumming at her toes while she giggles. Looking at it now, the massive koi staring at her was also black with a single white circle crowning its head. 

Yue was on her knees before her mind supplied her with the reason. "La," she whispered. "You... you're La." 

It - they smiled, showing off all their many, many teeth. Knowing who she was speaking to, the smile was less threatening. This was a powerful spirit, practically a deity to her tribe, but they were also the little fish Yue swam with as a child. _"You recognize me. I missed you Little Moon... you left the oasis. There was no way to see you. I had to stretch outwards..."_

Yue reached forward, resting a hand on their massive face. Each scale was the size of her palm, warm and cold at the same time, vibrating with energy and smoother than anything Yue has ever touched. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize."

" _You will visit now? When you sleep? Little Moon is no longer scared?"_

"Of course!" Talking to La was like slipping on perfectly-fitting boots. It was so familiar, so easy, so comfortable.

The water began to drain, carrying La away. The rabbit-spirit started running their paws through Yue's hair. _"Goodbye Little Moon... sweet dreams._ "

When Yue wakes up, she's smiling.

-

Pao places Yue in charge of money. All final purchases are to be run by him for his approval (he's still the owner), but he _always_ approves. Yue organizes bulk shipments of tea leaves, determines how much of what needs to be purchased, puts aside money to pay rent for the building and wages and buy more tea. The moment he realized Yue found mathematics easy, he transferred almost all financial control into her hands.

It's astonishing. He just... gave Yue the power. Her, a woman. Yue showed she could be trusted to handle money, something the men did back home (it was believed women were naturally less inclined towards mathematics than men), and Pao trusted in her skills completely. It's flattering. Empowering. 

Why isn't this the way it works back home? Yue is a capable person. She has a deep understanding of literature, of politics, of mathematics and infrastructure. With Zuko's instruction, she became adept with a weapon. If her people had given her the chance, she could have flourished like this back home, put her skills to use for her tribe.

She could've been _useful_ so much earlier. How many other women had their potential squandered under tradition? How much progress had been stymied by rigid, outdated structures? If she ever went home, she had to at least try to change things. Bring her people into the present. 

Smellerbee and Longshot visit on occasion. Longshot found work as a butcher, while Smellerbee made deliveries. Jet never visits, which Yue finds odd, seeing how besotted he'd been with Zuko earlier. Yue talks to La most nights, about anything and everything, eager to share her life with them now that she knows she can.

Yue finds herself content with the routine she's made for herself in Ba Sing Se. 

Until Hahn walks through the doors of the tea shop.


	2. Ba Sing Se (or: does Yue have self-worth issues?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i already had this one mostly finished but the next chapter is still just a little baby  
> please enjoy my horrifying overuse of italics  
> also this.... is not the last we'll see of Han

Zuko’s days go like this:

1\. He wakes up a little after Uncle and does morning meditation while breakfast is made.

2\. He hands Yue her bowl when she wakes up, then eats breakfast. He doesn’t need to always hand her breakfast, but she looks at him like he offered her the stars each time.

3\. Uncle heads over to Pao’s Tea House to start brewing. Yue spends half an hour writing in the notebook he stole for her before following. Zuko usually walks with her.

4\. He drags through six to ten hours of mind-numbing customer service. (On one memorable instance, a customer asked for jasmine, but insisted jasmine was supposed to be brown when served her cup. It took almost an hour to figure out she was thinking about genmaicha, but the woman was so incomprehensibly angry at that point that she threw the tea cup to the floor and stomped out. Agni, Zuko wished he was still a prince. Or at least that he could start a fight without repercussions. 

(Yue laughed so hard she cried, though, so at least something decent came out of it all).

5\. Uncle drags Zuko and Yue through the market to buy ingredients for dinner. He also incessantly flirts with shopkeepers and is constantly sidetracked by conversations with passing strangers. 

6\. They all go back to the dingy, cramped apartment. Sometimes Yue cooks imitations of traditional Water Tribe foods, which are almost always pickled or dried or something else weird and briney-tasting. Zuko tries to choke them down anyway, because she watches him and uncle like a messenger hawk while they eat, and she lights up with this goofy smile when they seem to like it and -

Anyway.

7\. There’s maybe two hours of time to pass uselessly lying around, before everyone goes to sleep and the cycle starts all over again.

Zuko hates it. His life is pathetic - some broke peasant serving tea to other broke peasants. There’s zero respect, no ability to make real change. It’s impossible to understand why Uncle is so _happy_ with this. He was the Dragon of the West, the best general in all of the Fire Nation, and he doesn’t care that all he has now is a shop he doesn’t even own and maybe twelve yuans to his name at any given time. 

Even Yue is satisfied. She was - is - the princess of the Northern Tribe, isn’t she? When Zuko had snuck into the North, it looked. Impressive. For a Water Tribe city. Everything was made out of ice, which Zuko thought was stupid - no matter where he went it was slippery and cold - but the buildings were intricate and the city organized. She’d mentioned that being royalty was cancelled out in some ways by being a girl (not her exact words, but Zuko wasn’t as dumb as Azula insisted. He could read between the lines), but surely living in a slum selling tea wasn’t an easy adjustment? He wasn’t the only one who wanted _more_ than this, right? 

Uncle and Yue make it look so simple. As if they don’t miss being royalty at all. But Zuko just wants to go _home_. 

Worse than his current living situation, that pitying look Yue gave him when she asked why he wasn’t home was stuck in his mind. It was how a person looked at a mortally-wounded animal, at a child who stubbornly believed their mother was coming back. 

Like his father hadn’t been in the _right_. 

The bitterness from his exile, from his awful job in this awful city, from how flawlessly Uncle and Yue slid into this false life, only grows by the day. So when Yue stumbles backwards into the tea shop wall, eyes blown wide with terror, hands shaking, Zuko feels a rush of vile satisfaction. 

_Finally_ , someone other than him was struggling too. 

Then the guilt slams into him. Yue is his friend - possibly even a close friend - and he’s drawing some twisted pleasure in seeing her terrified? What kind of person does that make him? 

( _Monster_ , is how Earth Kingdom citizens refer to the Fire Nation. They thought Zuko’s people were monsters. But why? When all the Fire Nation wants is to help?)

( ~~You don’t need to burn down villages and slaughter civilians to help~~ ).

It doesn’t matter that he’s frustrated. What matters is Yue, his friend, needs him. A prince protects his people, and Yue, Water Tribe she may be, is one of his people now.

Zuko has never seen her look so scared before. 

He follows her line of sight to the doorway of the shop. A group of men is entering, headed by a boy their age wearing Water Tribe clothing. He’s grinning at Yue, but not in a friendly way. Even from a distance, Zuko spots the predatory look in his eyes, the sharpness in his smile. The gleam of entertainment at other’s misery (just like Azula when she’d “play” with him). Adding in Yue’s abject horror at seeing him, and what she said in the ferry... 

“ _Uncle!”_ Zuko near-shouts. Not one customer flinched, used to his yelling at this point. He never bothered walking back to the counter to read back orders. “Yue and I are going on break.” 

Uncle appears confused for less than five seconds before catching on and nodding. “Be back in twenty minutes,” he says. What he was really saying was _he’ll be gone in twenty minutes._

Zuko all but drags Yue down the street, zigzagging through back alleys and crowded roads until they’re a safe distance away. “Was that him? Was that Hahn?” 

Yue is trembling. Zuko doesn’t know what to do, so he hugs her. 

“I don’t know what he’s doing here, I don’t - he’s supposed to be back home - why would Father let him leave when we need all the warriors to protect the city? I don’t understand, I-“ Yue sobs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” 

Zuko stands still as stone while she cries all over his clothes. If it were Mai this happened to, or Azula, Hahn would be dead, or at least traumatized. Ty Lee wouldn’t get revenge, but she’d tell Mai, who’d tell Azula, and one of them would kill him for her. Hahn dead probably isn’t the outcome Yue’s going for, though. Zuko is absolutely not going to give a heartfelt speech to calm her down - which is what Uncle would do - so he turns to what can do the talking for him.

“Do you. Want to get a hot bun.” Yue _loves_ hot buns. Especially ones filled with red bean paste. When Iroh first treated her to one, she did a full-body wiggle out of pure joy. Whenever Yue rewards herself, it’s with hot buns. 

Yue pulls her face out of his chest. Her eyes are all red, but she isn’t shaking anymore. “Yes,” she says. “Please.”

By the time Zuko walks her back to Pao’s - three bean buns in Yue’s stomach, a small smile on her face, and twenty yuans gone from Zuko’s pockets - Hahn is gone. Uncle is humming to himself when they walk in, the picture of an oblivious, jolly old man, but the mood in the shop is uncharacteristically tense. A few patrons keep casting wary looks towards the counter. 

Zuko can’t help but be disappointed he missed Uncle _obliterate_ that creep.

-

For a few days after the Hahn sighting, Yue is jumpy and on-edge. She jerks to attention whenever the shop door opens, scans the crowd for familiar blue in the streets, even wakes up from a nightmare to move the dresser in front of their apartment door one night.

That lead to a mortifying explanation the following morning. Iroh was kind enough to go out and purchase a second lock afterwards, although then Yue felt guilty for inconveniencing him. She’d already cost Zuko three hot buns (and however much he spent on a beautiful green and white hanfu that night in a further attempt to cheer her up) and cried all over him as if she was incapable of controlling herself, and now poor Iroh had to waste money because she was being hysterical?

It takes an intervention from La to get Yue to calm down. 

“ _Would you like me to send Xīng, Little Moon? If not, I can always drown him.”_

Compared to Tui (or at least what Yue knows about Tui), La is indifferent to humanity at best. Xīng, the rabbit-spirit, is fascinated by humans and adorably exciteable. They are the preferable option to La drowning Hahn and his entourage the next time he sets sail. Yue agrees, grateful, and when she wakes up Xīng is still with her. 

Zuko can’t see them, so Yue assumes Xīng is only visible to her until she enters the other room for breakfast and Iroh drops his tea cup. The next ten minutes are spent convincing Zuko the two of them aren’t playing some strange prank on him, culminating in Xīng taking pity on everyone and letting Zuko see them. He’s instantly enamored, softly petting Xīng with a gentle look in his eyes. 

“They’re cute,” is Zuko’s final verdict. It’s clear “cute” is code for “I’ll die for them” in Zuko.

Xīng hovers nearby most of the day, playing with her hair when she gets nervous. On occasion, they hop around Zuko’s feet, well aware he can’t resist giving them a stroke or two. They sleep curled under Yue’s blanket, pressed against her side, although Zuko’s mentioned Xīng sneaking into his bed in the middle of the night a few times. They sneak crumbs of breakfast and dinner from the table, despite Yue’s scolding. Zuko is particularly vulnerable to Xīng’s dewy, begging eyes, and slides them snacks when Yue isn’t watching.

Xīng makes the apartment feel more like home. They’re skilled at chasing away nightmares and pressing against Yue or Zuko when they get too stressed. Xīng brings out Zuko’s nurturing streak as well; Yue walks in on him spoon-feeding Xīng leftovers or lovingly muttering to them too many times to count. It’s beyond adorable.

There’s something about them that’s just so _calming_.

Maybe _too_ calming. When Jet throws the door to Pao’s tea shop open, frothing at the mouth and ready for a fight, Yue almost misses it as the threat it is. All she sees is Jet making an entrance before Xīng presses against her cheek and she relaxes, going back to counting inventory. Then Zuko is hopping across tables and swinging swords and Jet is attacking him and yelling about firebenders and Yue’s stomach drops so fast it hurts. 

How does Jet _know?_

_“I saw them heating their tea!”_

That was his explanation? Hot tea? Thinking back, Yue recalls Iroh heated some tea when they first arrived, but that was _weeks_ ago. Had he been lying in wait all this time? If he had, why didn’t he choose a better method of confrontation? Accusing people of firebending for _heating tea_ while they _worked in a tea shop_ was one of the worst plans Yue has ever heard. Did he think this through at _all?_

The Dai Li arrive and arrest him. Customers crowd outside and watch him be carried away. “That was scary,” Yue whispers. Xīng beeps. A few patrons comfort her, but only Iroh and Zuko truly understand her meaning. For a moment, their new lives were in jeopardy. 

Smellerbee and Longshot stop visiting after that. Yue wonders if they were pretending to be her friends to spy on them, or if they were too embarrassed to come by. 

Or maybe, the Dai Li got to them, too. 

Yue had just gotten back onto stable footing after Hahn, and now she was down two friends and on edge all over again. When the friendly-looking girl named Jin asks Zuko out, Yue throws herself into prepping him for the date. If the idea of Zuko going out with someone disappoints her in some odd way, Yue ignores it. This is her friend! Getting the chance to connect with a girl his age! Yue is happy for him!

“Uncle would you just - _Uncle!_ Leave it!” Iroh did not leave it. He continued brushing Zuko’s hair until it was plastered to his head. He looked like a dork, and Yue couldn’t help but giggle. 

“You look so fancy,” she says, only half teasing him. Zuko blushes a deep, dark red, encouraging Yue to keep at it. How could she stop when he made it so rewarding? “What’s the plan for the date?” 

Zuko sinks his head into his shoulders like he’s trying to become a turtle-duck. “Dinner.” 

“...That’s it? You’re not taking her anywhere special afterwards? A walk around town? Shopping? Anything?” Yue can’t tell if she’s pleased or exasperated. “Just dinner?” 

“And a coupon!” Iroh tucked said coupon into Zuko’s pocket, winking. Xīng claps from where they’re sitting on the stovetop.

“I think she’s more in charge of where we go than I am.” Isn’t that a concept. And Zuko isn’t irritated about it either. He mostly seems resigned to his fate. Yue feels a tad bit guilty at forcing him out of his comfort zone like this, but he needs to interact with more people. He’s a kind person who deserves to have friends.

Yue isn’t guilty enough to _not_ obnoxiously send him off, waving and cheering for him as he speedwalks away. Iroh does the same, although for him Yue suspects it’s more like a mother seeing off their son than a friend purposely teasing him. 

With Zuko out, it’s just her, Xīng and Iroh for the night. Yue is coming to consider him family; he gives such wonderful advice, and he cares about her wellbeing. He reminds her of her mother. Yue can go to him with anything. 

Thinking of her mother reminds her of her father. How is he? Did he hate her for abandoning her people? Had she let him down, running from her duties? Perhaps he’d replaced her with a boy. Yue always knew, in the back of her mind, that he’d be better served with a male heir. Of course he loves her, but Yue never felt she was enough. He deserves an heir that can lead the tribe one day.

Hopefully he won’t replace her with _Hahn._

_Why_ did he refuse to believe her about Hahn? Why wasn’t the terrified voice of his daughter enough to convince him of Hahn’s true character? Yue thought he’d valued her opinion, despite the fact that he’d only seek her counsel behind closed doors. But at the end of the day, he valued Hahn’s more. Even now, Yue struggles with reconciling the doting father that loved her more than anything with the chief that favored Hahn over her.

“Miss Yue, with my nephew gone for the evening, I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine.” 

She’s good enough for Iroh. Yue holds on to that. “Of course! I’d be delighted.”

Iroh’s friend is an older woman who sells jewelry. She has a large bun of gray hair and long, spindly fingers. “Is this her?” The woman asks as Yue approaches. 

“Indeed it is. Miss Yue, allow me to introduce Qióng Féng.”

Yue bows. “It is an honor to meet a friend of Iroh’s.”

The three of them shuffle into the back of the shop. “Miss Yue, I’ve brought you here today because I believe you’d be a valuable member of the White Lotus. We are a secretive society that transcends divisions of nations to share and guard knowledge.”

This isn’t what Yue expected. She thought Iroh was introducing her to a lady friend, not inviting her into a mystical club. The same club he’d utilized in the desert. “Me? Are you sure?” 

Iroh smiles at her. “You are an open-minded person. You’re patient, and you can hold your tongue when needed. You wouldn’t abuse or hoard information for personal gain, and while it’s not a requirement, your deep connection to the spirit world is a definite plus.” 

Xīng beeps.

“What about Zuko?” 

Iroh’s smile becomes pained. “Perhaps someday. Right now, I fear he has enough on his plate.” 

This... is true. Yue still feels guilty. Here’s a major part of Iroh’s life, and he’s sharing it with her, not his nephew. Zuko would be devastated to know Iroh didn’t trust him with this. On the other hand, Zuko is struggling with being away from home, seeing the crimes his own people were committing, and finding his place in the world. A secret club might be too much.

“I understand.”

Féng hands her a white lotus tile. “Welcome to the White Lotus, initiate.”

-

The anniversary of Iroh’s son’s death is in two days. Iroh doesn’t say anything, but Zuko explains why he’s suddenly so reticent. He’s living in the city that killed his child. 

Yue figures she can cook a hearty Fire Nation dinner (or at least as close as she could come) to subtly tell Iroh she’s here for him. First she buys pork cutlets, then eggs, panko, rice, and some stock for broth. Back home, cooking was expected of her. Now, Yue finds herself cooking for people because she enjoys it. The way a person’s eyes light up when they eat something good - it’s thrilling. Yue likes caring for people. She likes _choosing_ to do so. 

“Princess Yue,” a painfully familiar, nasal voice calls out behind her. Her body floods with ice water as she turns to face Hahn. Xīng pushes against her side. Unlike the time in the tea shop, she isn’t horrified. The cold in her veins isn’t fear. 

Yue is _furious_. 

How _dare_ he intrude on the life she’d found? How _dare_ he drive her from her home, only to follow her? How _dare_ he say her name with that smug tone, that air of superiority, like he’s _more_ than her. 

“Hahn.” Yue raises her chin. 

Hahn steps towards her, eyes roving up and down, spending a disproportionate amount of time on her breasts. “You look okay in green, but I prefer you in blue.” Yue remains still. Hahn commenting on the hanfu Zuko bought for her only feeds her ire. “Chief sent me to bring you home,” Hahn says. “So we can finally tie the knot.” He fishes Yue’s engagement necklace out of his pocket. She isn’t sure what’s worse: the thought that he entered her room to take it, or her father finding it and giving it to him. 

Yue lets her groceries slide from her arms onto the ground. One hand slides to her hip, fingering the handle of her dagger obscured by waves of emerald fabric. Xīng nuzzles the other in a show of support. “No.”

_“No?!”_ Evidently this was not how Hahn imagined the encounter playing out. Or maybe it was just shocking to hear that word come from Yue’s mouth. “You don’t have a _choice_ Yue. The Chief is telling you to come home. Your _fiancé_ is telling you to come home. You can’t _not_ listen.” 

“I can, and I do have a choice. I’m choosing to stay here.” 

Hahn _snarls_. In that moment, all his pretenses fall away, leaving a feral animal spitting and snapping. “You’re _mine_ , Yue. You’ve _always_ been mine, you’ll always _be_ mine. Now get _over_ here. You don’t want to make me angry.” 

A crowd is drawing at this point. Yue figures it’s time to leave. She picks up her groceries again, keeping them all on one arm so her other hand is free to use her knife. “I’m leaving. If you follow me, if you _touch_ me, I will fight back.” 

Hahn stands in the street and watches her go.

-

“How would you like to own your very own tea shop in the Upper Ring?”

-

Zuko has a habit of climbing around on rooftops. Yue and Iroh both agree this is dangerous; the rooftops are sheet metal and they get slippery. Zuko doesn’t listen to them. 

“The avatar is in Ba Sing Se,” he says as if it’s a court verdict. In his hand is a poster of an impossibly fluffy animal. Xīng chews on the bottom-right corner.

“What are you going to do?” Yue asks. She doesn’t want him to chase after the avatar. She doesn’t want him going back home to his father. She doesn’t want him to side against what she knows is right. 

“I don’t know.”

Zuko vanishes during the night, along with Iroh. When Yue wakes up the next morning the sun is just rising. Xīng is still asleep under the blanket. Iroh has slid open the door, and Zuko is stumbling in wearing the all-black outfit Yue associates with his robbery days.

Sliding out from her blanket, Yue pads over to greet them. “Good morning. Why were you out so early?”

Instead of answering, Zuko opts to pass out. His honey-gold eyes roll back until only the whites are showing. His head thunks against her shoulder while the rest of his body sags. Yue reacts fast enough to snake her arms under his own and prevent him from falling to the floor. 

_“Zuko!”_

Iroh lifts Zuko’s legs. Together they carry him to his bedroll. He’s hot, and when Yue strips off his thick shirt she can see he’s sweating. 

She takes some bandages from her travel bag to use as a compress, dipping them in the bucket of water Iroh supplies before plastering them to his forehead. “What happened?”

Iroh lovingly strokes Zuko’s hair. “My nephew made a choice that goes against everything he’s been taught.” 

Yue doesn’t bother pressing for details. She leaves for the market to buy herbs Song taught her about long ago, at the beginning of their journey, to brew Zuko some tea that should lower his fever. When she comes back he’s still asleep, and he stays that way as she boils water and stirs in the tea leaves.

Iroh props Zuko against his chest once the tea is done, gently talking him awake. Yue thinks of all the times he must have done this for his own son, for Zuko in the past, and her heart aches for him. Zuko is barely coherent, but he obediently drinks the tea without a word before sliding back into oblivion.

The problem with caring for people is there’s only so much to be done. Yue can brew all the tea she wants, stack blankets and pillows and refresh compresses all day, but only Zuko’s body could do the real healing. 

Yue doesn’t wish she’s a bender often. Looking at Zuko on the floor is one of the rare moments she craves the power to heal with just a pouch of water. She wonders if Zuko was the same way when Azula attacked her. If he felt as restless as she does. As ineffectual. 

She and Iroh take turns sitting at his bedside all day. Few words are exchanged. They’re both too worried, too focused on Zuko. Xīng sits with their chin on his forehead, chirping when the compress heats up. Yue falls asleep curled against him outside the blanket, waking every time he coughs. 

The blanket is wrapped around her the next morning, and Zuko is eating juk in the other room. 

Yue is at his side in an instant, placing her palms all over his face, checking for a fever. A finger brushes over the edge of his scar - it feels colder than the rest of his skin, smooth like fresh ice in some places and mottled in others - and Yue almost freezes. She didn’t meant to touch it, not without permission, but Zuko doesn’t react. “I’m so glad you’re awake - how do you feel? Are you tired? Is your throat sore? When did you wake up?”

Under her fingers, Zuko grunts at her. Yue stills. “I’m fine now, calm down. I only got up ten minutes ago.”

Realizing she may have been too intense in her mothering, Yue retracts her hands. “That’s good,” she says quietly. “I was worried about you.”

“You did pass out onto Miss Yue, after all. It was very dramatic!” Iroh hands her a hot bowl of juk, which Xīng greedily sneaks a bite of. She barely notices; she and Zuko are busy blushing. “Now how do you feel about the Jasmine Dragon?”

-

The Upper Ring is stunning. The buildings are spacious and clean, with tile rooftops and stylized walls. The roads are smooth, the plantlife is flourishing, and the homes have sizeable plots of land all to themselves. There are no cramped apartment complexes, or creepy alleyways, or potholes filled with animal droppings. 

Their new apartment is four times the size of their old one. There are two separate bedrooms, a sitting room, a bathroom, and a kitchen. They have a stone deck that approaches the street and a patch of grass to call their own. 

Yue has her own room now, instead of a bedroll on the floor in the same room as the others. She has a bed, with a mattress and everything. Yue hasn’t slept in a real bed in so long. Back home, beds were raised off the ground so that the cold floor didn’t leech away body heat. Here, it seems it’s a stylistic choice, with an ornate wood frame and silky emerald sheets that don’t retain heat so much as they look expensive.

Zuko says the Fire Nation uses silk sheets too, specifically because they don’t retain much heat. That, and because silk stays nice and soft after being treated for flame resistance.

(Zuko also says young children accidentally setting furniture on fire when they come into their bending is a common problem). 

Despite the fact that it’s much warmer in Ba Sing Se than in the North Pole, Yue misses the heavy, velvety comfort of pelts and furs. She hasn’t been able to find any in the markets. She misses _home_ , the salted jerky, the heavy parkas, the fog that rolled in on summer mornings. Yue wishes she could take Iroh and Zuko there, share how wonderful it is. Iroh told her they’d been, in the same breath he told her the Fire Nation attacked her home weeks before they met, but breaking in as an enemy army is different than being shown around as guests. 

Maybe someday she’ll be able to bring them for a tour.

Iroh’s tea shop, the Jasmine Dragon, rests on the top of an imposing marble staircase. There are topiarys in front of the entrance. If Pao could see the place, he’d have an aneurysm. Yue is still in charge of the books, but since there isn’t years of incorrect accounting to go through it’s not time-consuming. Instead most of her job is baking: Iroh has a small pastry menu Yue’s worked to learn. Zuko is still a waiter, although ever since his fever he’s brooded about it less. He even seems content, which is a lovely change. Yue enjoys the way his face softens when he smiles. 

She loves seeing him happy. 

The Jasmine Dragon pulls in loads more money in a day than Pao’s did in a week. Yue buys spices she’s never heard of, prime cuts of meat for fancy dinners, a lacquered wooden chest small enough to fit in her bag with tiny compartments she fills with ground herbs. She finds Zuko a new pair of shoes that don’t have holes in the bottom. Iroh gets a new personal tea set with intricate decorations and gold rims. Xīng’s adorableness is rewarded with candied figs and small jars of honey.

Yue even buys jade hair pins to replace to the ones she sold. She’s never worn green in her hair, but Zuko assures her it looks “fine.”

It’s cute when he struggles out compliments.

(She brings Zuko along on a few shopping sprees. He’s the expert on imitation Fire Nation cuisine, and he doesn’t complain about holding a bag or two).

Hahn hasn’t shown up again. Maybe he couldn’t get in the Upper Ring. Jet never comes around either, and his accusations are never followed up on. Things seem to be settling down, enough for Yue to start thinking about the future. 

Does she want to stay in Ba Sing Se forever? _Could_ she? The guilt from running away churns inside her. Yue has a duty to her people, to her tribe. She still hasn’t settled whether her fleeing Hahn was selfish. Her father must be beside himself, despite his purposeful ignorance of her struggle and the possible benefits of his female heir vanishing. Was she helping anyone but herself, hiding in Ba Sing Se?

On the other hand, Yue still felt a fierce loyalty towards Iroh. He saved Tui - he saved her - and she’d sworn to be there for him. What if something happens ( _soon_ ) and he needs her? 

What about Zuko? Yue couldn’t just _leave_ Zuko. He taught her how to use a dagger. He supported her. Zuko is fun to rile up, endearingly awkward, and at heart he’s gentle and kind. He understands the intense need to serve one’s nation, the pressures of royal birth. Zuko is one of her closest friends.

Yue’s gotten used to him. To them. She doesn’t know what she’d do if she wasn’t coming home to him and Iroh. Trying out new recipes. Teaching Zuko how to pickle vegetables. Pretending she doesn’t notice how his face warps when he tries Water Tribe cooking and chokes out, “it tastes great.” Falling asleep knowing she’s safe with them in the other room. Waking up to him and Iroh preparing breakfast, smiling when he graciously serves her food. 

Duty or individual persuits? Her country or her dear friends? 

A messenger arrives at the Jasmine Dragon near the end of the first day. The Earth King wants Iroh to personally serve him tea. “I’m proud of you uncle. You deserve it,” Zuko says. Yue agrees, but she can’t shake the sense that ( _trap danger protect Iroh_ ) something is off.

The palace architecture is massive enough to distract her from any nagging concerns. Gardens among gardens lead up to the royal building itself, shaped topiaries and artificial ponds painstakingly organized in the vast swathes of open space. The actual palace is unexpectedly simple on the outside, just a large, rectangular building with tall staircases and rows upon rows of guards. Inside the floors are so clean, Yue can see her reflection in the tiles. The walls are covered with ancient historical tapestries Xīng darts in and out of, ornate patterns of gold and jade and emerald, all leading up to doors larger than three buildings from the Lower Ring stacked on top of one another. It’s a grandiose display, seen only by palace staff and the Earth King himself. 

Yue can’t help but find it distasteful. A third of the Lower Ring could fit in the gardens alone. Why was all this space spent on decorations only a select few ever see when people lived in cramped, crumbling apartments? The worth of one wall of decor alone could change the lives of every single customer that frequented Pao’s.

Guards steer the three of them into an out-of-the-way room, instructing them to wait for the king’s arrival. So they wait.

And wait. 

And wait.

“Why is he taking so long?” Zuko whispers to her. Xīng is lounging in his lap, relishing the attention Zuko gives them. Yue shrugs back in response. The suspicious ( _run run run_ ) feeling has returned and is only growing stronger. Finally, the doors slide open. People begin flowing in. People who aren’t the Earth King.

It’s Azula. And the Dai Li. Working in tandem. Yue grabs Zuko’s hand, eyes locked with Azula’s. Her side suddenly itches. Even standing still, the princess of the Fire Nation exudes raw power. She’s confident, she’s in control, and she’s wicked intelligent. Yue would admire her if she wasn’t out to kill them.

“Hello, Zuzu,” Azula crows, tilting her head like a cat-owl studying its prey. “Serving tea now, I see. What would Father say?”

Zuko squeezes Yue’s hand, either to reassure her or to ground himself. Xīng is smushed against his chest, trying to calm him, but it’s not working. He’s stiff as ice. Iroh starts talking, and Yue can tell (soon protect Iroh) he’s about to give them an opening. 

Fire arcs from Iroh’s mouth, forcing Dai Li to shy away. The intensity of the flames is overwhelming. She’s never seen Iroh bend before, and the power he wields is exactly what she’d expect of the Fire Lord’s elder brother. Still clutching her hand, Zuko makes a break for it, followed closely by Iroh, with Xīng hot on his heels. He only stops when Iroh launches himself out a window. 

“Jump!” Iroh is waiting for them in the bushes below. Zuko isn’t moving. Xīng chirps at him, tilting their head.

“I’m done running,” he declares, sounding for all the world like he want to run. Yue can see the regret in his eyes, and she realizes he’s trying to stall Azula, to protect her and Iroh. 

Yue won’t allow him to make that choice for her. He’s correct only in acknowledging that without a distraction, Azula will catch all of them. 

“I’m so sorry,” Yue whispers to him. Zuko only has a second to stare at her, desperate and confused, before she spins in front of him and _kicks_ his knee as hard as she can. The confusion is still present as he stumbles, replaced with horror just as she shoves him out the window. 

Iroh takes it from there. Yue can hear him _screaming_ as he’s dragged to safety. She doesn’t regret her decision. Stone cuffs close around her wrists before she turns from the window, her fingers never managing to reach the hilt of her dagger resting in her clothes. Xīng is still with her, although they’re visibly distressed, whining and circling Yue as the Dai Li force her forward. 

“Aw, how cute,” Azula steps forward until she’s a breath from Yue’s face. “You really think what you did matters.” 

-

Zuko is _ten seconds_ from burning Ba Sing Se to the ground. Of course the _moment_ things start to look up, Azula comes in and ruins _everything_. 

Maybe it was stupid, to think he could live the rest of his life hiding in Ba Sing Se, but for a moment he’d been content with it. Their apartment was nice, the food wasn’t the worst (especially now that Yue was experimenting with spices), and Uncle could live his dream of serving everyone tea. Letting go of capturing the avatar had left Zuko with no desperate illusions of returning home for the first time in three years, and it felt _liberating_. 

He really thought he could forget about his destiny, his people, his responsibilities as prince. Live in some Earth Kingdom city with his head in the sand serving tea. 

He should’ve been on guard. He should’ve _expected_ something like this. Every time he lets himself relax _everything_ falls apart, and now Yue is paying the price. Not that Zuko isn’t furious with her. This was the second time she’d pulled the self-sacrifice move! Didn’t she realize how absolutely terrifying it is watching her throw herself into danger?

“I’m so sorry,” she said. As if that helped. 

At least Uncle has a plan. On the way out of the palace grounds he snatches a Dai Li agent, tying him up within seconds and dragging him along like a misbehaving pet. The agent is terrified, likely because he knows who just captured him, but also because Zuko looks ready to spontaneously combust at Uncle’s side. 

The house Uncle leads them to is in the Upper Ring’s wealthiest neighborhood. He knocks on the door, the picture of serenity aside from his trembling captive and tight posture.

Zuko expects another mysterious old man to answer. 

He does not expect the avatar.

Instinctively, his hands searches for Yue’s to calm himself down, before he remembers himself. Zuko can’t believe this. His uncle knew where the avatar was living the entire time?! 

The avatar’s little gang readies themselves for a fight, only relaxing when the tiny girl Zuko vaguely remembers from the abandoned village says, “don’t worry guys, he’s cool.”

“Cool? _Cool?!_ He brought _Zuko_ to our doorstep!” The boy with the stupid ponytail (Sokka, Zuko thinks he’s heard the others call him) is having a conniption. 

“I also brought a gift,” Uncle says, yanking the Dai Li agent forward. The little girl earthbends a stone cage around him despite his restraints. “I’ve come to ask for your help.”

The avatar pokes his head out from the doorway. “Hey... where’s the girl who was with you?”

“Azula got her,” Zuko spits out before he can help himself.

“Azula’s _here?!”_

The avatar’s group starts whispering to themselves about “Katara,” who Zuko remembers as the waterbender who healed Yue. Apparently she’s missing. 

“We’ll help,” the avatar declares, although it’s clear the deciding factor is their own missing Water Tribe member.

Zuko just hopes they find Yue before Azula gets rid of her. He can handle working with the avatar until then.

-

Yue’s not the only prisoner in the caves Azula throws her in. There’s a girl, Water Tribe, almost familiar. 

“You!” The girl gasps. “If you’re here, then Zuko and Iroh are too!”

“That’s correct. I’m sorry, do I know you?” Xīng doesn’t, going by how they’re peering at the girl from behind Yue despite the fact Xīng can only be seen when they choose to be.

The girl looks sheepish. “I guess it makes sense you don’t remember. I healed you back when Azula attacked everyone in the abandoned village. I’m Katara, by the way.”

“Oh!” What a small world. “In that case, thank you! It healed within a week, you’re very skilled. My name is Yue, if you didn’t know. You’re Water Tribe, right? North or South?”

“South. I know you’re North, since I know everyone from the South. Can I ask? Why you’re with _Zuko?_ Did he kidnap you or something?"

Katara knows every single person in the Southern Water Tribe? Yue thinks back to home, the rows upon rows of buildings. Katara must have an eidetic memory, or maybe she’s the ultimate people person? It seems Katara knows Zuko too, although from her tone it isn’t a friendly relationship. 

“His Uncle saved my life,” she’s long since given up separating herself and Tui’s emotions on the subject. “So I travel with him to repay that debt. That, and they’re dear friends.” 

“Friends? They’re _Fire Nation!”_ The sudden, vitriolic explosion takes Yue aback. “They’re the reason my village is less than fifty people! They’re the reason all but _one_ of the airbenders are dead! Firebenders killed my mother, took away _every_ waterbender from the South but me, forced my dad to go to war! And you’re _friends?_ Do you even _care_ about the Water Tribes?” Katara is heaving by the time she finishes. It’s understandable, the outrage she’s experiencing hearing a Water Tribe member has chosen to ignore the lines of war. Few people have that luxury.

Beyond that, Yue is horrified, hearing what’s happened to her sister tribe. Fifty people?! All that remains of the South is _fifty_ people? With no waterbenders? Yue always assumed the South was much like the North; fortified with massive walls and legions of benders, isolated but carrying on successfully. Not crippled, limping along after a near-successful waterbender genocide. 

Why hasn’t the North ever sent aid? How could her father, her grandfather, her great-grandfather all ignore this?

“Katara,” Yue says, voice thready with abject despair. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea the South’s situation is so dire. Please, forgive my negligence.” She bows low, humbled to be in the presence of the sole southern waterbender. 

Katara is calming down after spilling all her frustrations. This must’ve been a long time coming. “It’s not your fault. There’s nothing you could have done. I’m the one who’s sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled.”

Yue keeps silent, giving Katara time to recollect. Then, “can I ask? How you know Zuko and Iroh? You don’t have to answer.”

The caves are cold. Yue wishes she was wearing her furs instead of silk. Katara thunks her head against a crystal. “Zuko chased us across the world. Me, my brother, and the avatar. He drove his ship into our village, he threatened my gran-gran, he stole my mother’s necklace, all to capture Aang - the avatar - and bring him back to his father in chains.” 

“I’m sorry,” Yue says. “That was wrong of him. For what it’s worth, he hasn’t been after you in a while. He and Iroh are fugitives from the Fire Nation now. I’d never say this to him, but I’m glad he can’t go home. I don’t think his father treats him well at all. He’s safer far, far away from the Fire Lord.” 

The conversation lulls. Yue’s attention drifts. Shapes pull from the shadows, vanishing when she glances their way. Xīng curls up on her lap. If she put her mind to it, Yue could sense ( _push and pull our gift_ ) something from Katara. A hum, or a buzz, radiating outwards. An energy of sorts. It’s pleasant to listen to. 

“Have you visited the North?” Yue asks, because the shapes are starting to put her on edge. She doesn’t know what kind of spirits live down here. She doesn’t want to risk them being the unkind type.

Katara scoots over so their knees are touching. A thrill shoots through Yue at the show of trust. “Yeah, we took Aang there so he and I could learn waterbending. It was beautiful! Although I didn’t realize you guys didn’t let women fight.” 

“You can in the South?” 

“Not with weapons. But bending? Absolutely. I managed to convince the North to teach me, though.” 

Yue cranes her head to stare Katara in the eyes. “You did?! How?”

At this, Katara looks sheepish. “I, um. Called Master Pakku a sour old geezer and attacked him. And then he found out my gran-gran was his fiancé that fled the South.”

She called Pakku... Katara called _Pakku_... she _attacked_ him...? Yue is speechless. Beyond impressed. Devastated she missed it. “That’s...” Yue can barely spit the words out. She grasps Katara’s hands in her own, eyes serious. “Katara... you’re my _hero_. I’ve always wished I could say that to him.”

The wall of the cave bursts open. Yue yelps and clings to her new favorite person.

“Katara!” One of the children from the abandoned village - not the Water Tribe boy, so probably the avatar, Aang - flew from the hole. “You’re okay!”

“Yue!” Zuko and Iroh follow Aang into the cave. The two of them are dusty and disheveled but safe. The tension along Zuko’s shoulders loosens when they lock eyes, and Iroh smiles warm in relief.

Yue unlatches from Katara and runs to hug them. Iroh’s hug is soft and reassuring, like being wrapped in a soft blanket. Zuko’s is intense. He’s all angles and trembling edges and barely-contained anxiety that Yue wants nothing more to ease away. Xīng floats from Iroh’s head to Zuko’s, chirping and squeaking in joy to see their friends. 

Turning to Aang, Yue bows. “Thank you for helping them find me, esteemed avatar. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

Aang bows back, casting a wary glance towards Zuko. “Right,” he says. “No problem.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and help your friends,” Iroh says, expression suddenly heavy as he turns to Zuko. Aang and Katara don’t argue, leaving Iroh, Zuko, and Yue alone in the glittering catacombs. 

“Uncle?”

“Zuko... you’ve grown so much these past few months.” Iroh’s words are careful and measured, like he’s thought this speech out over and over. “You’ve seen what the Fire Nation is really doing to the rest of the world. You’ve seen what our once proud nation has been twisted into. It’s time for you to choose, nephew. Choose good.”

It’s happening. Iroh is outright asking Zuko to commit treason. Yue abruptly feels like a voyeur, standing in on a conversation she has no right to. Zuko looks like Iroh just slapped him. Xīng rubs against his calf, but he doesn’t react. He’s trapped between his home and his morality.

Yue reaches for his hand just as Azula and her Dai Li arrive, encasing Iroh in crystal and interrupting Zuko’s decision. 

“Uncle,” Azula titters, stalking closer. Xīng freezes against Zuko. “I never expected you to turn traitor, let alone try to _drag_ Zuko down with you.” Her tone says the opposite. 

Zuko snarls at her. “Release him right now.” 

Azula is unphased. “You’re not a traitor, are you, Zuko? There’s still hope for you to redeem yourself.” 

“Zuko, no!”

“Why don’t you let him decide, Uncle?” Azula’s face falls into an imitation of sincerity. “I need you Zuko. The only way we win is together. You can come home, you can have father’s love again.” It’s stunning, the way Azula walks circles around him, offers him everything he wants with a poison tongue.

Azula sends the Dai Li away, heading after Aang with a parting, “you’re free to choose.” 

With her and her manipulations gone, Yue seizes her chance. “Zuko... you were there when the Fire Nation attacked the Northern Tribe. My people were killed. Our sacred places violated. Our homes destroyed. Do you agree with those actions?” Zuko won’t meet her eyes. “I’m going to help the avatar. For my people. I’d very much like to remain on your side. Please consider that.” 

Yue leaves to assist Aang, followed by Xīng. Zuko stands by Iroh and stares at the floor. 

-

The thing about bringing a knife to a bending fight is, well, it’s bringing a knife to a bending fight. Bending can be long- or short-ranged. Knives only reach as far as Yue’s arms. Fire can’t be knocked away. Knives can. Knives can’t stab through stone. Any element can injure Yue through her clothes. 

Yue’s contribution to the massive battle between the Dai Li and Azula versus Katara and Aang is. Not as large as she prefers. Yue spends a large majority of her time dodging stray flames or stones and hiding behind stalagmites, waiting for an opening to dart in and jab her dagger in a Dai Li’s back. 

She’s never been in a battle before. Yue’s terrified, shaking as she hides and waits, but she can’t stand by. For the first time in her life, she’s _contributing_. Xīng sticks close to her back and chitters when Yue needs to move, sometimes tripping her targets before Yue attacks. Five Dai Li meet their end at the point of her knife before Zuko and Iroh arrive. 

The fighting seems to slow at their entrance. Azula pauses in her attacks and stares at her brother, calculating. A smirk curls her lips. 

Zuko breathes in. Breathes out. Jerks his fist forward and sends plumes of fire towards his little sister. Azula’s face twitches, shifts from expectant to genuine shock to barely-controlled fury.

_“Traitor!”_ Azula shrieks. Zuko doesn’t let up. 

Dai Li keep filtering into the caves like ants towards food, sliding down walls, bursting from caves, burrowing in from the ground. There’s five of them and hundreds of Dai Li. Aang must realize this, because he starts glowing, lifting into the air in a terrifying show of strength. Wind whips around the catacombs, carrying shards of crystal and dirt that sting Yue’s skin. Xīng stares in awe, drawn to the spiritual well of power broiling under Aang’s skin. 

The Dai Li are frozen. Azula’s swift, measured movements stand out in contrast. Yue recognizes the form from when Iroh tried to teach Zuko; she’s drawing up lightning. Aang is turned away from her, leaving his back vulnerable. 

Yue can’t let the hope of the world die here. The last airbender, slaughtered by the descendant of his people’s murderer deep underground. She’s close enough to intercept the lightning, if she reaches, if she _pushes_ -

Hot fingers wrap around the loose silks of her clothes, pulling back before she can save Aang. The lightning hits its mark, air reeking of ozone, filled with Katara’s screaming. 

Yue wrenches out of Zuko’s grip, turning to face him. “Why would you _stop_ me?! I could have helped!” She’s yelling at him. Yue hasn’t yelled at anyone in... ever. 

Zuko yells right back. “Why do you always _do_ this?! You keep _throwing_ yourself into danger, you keep using yourself like you’re _expendable_! Like you’re not _worth_ anything! Do you _want_ to die?”

_“He’s more important than me!”_ Yue _screams_. “He’s the world’s last hope! He’s the avatar! If one of us is going to die it should be _me!”_

“And back at the abandoned village? Back at the palace? Uncle and I aren’t the avatar, but you did the _exact same thing!”_

“Because you’re _important_ to me!”

“What about _you?!_ Don’t you matter to _yourself?_ Why don’t you care what happens to _you?!”_

_“Knock it off!”_ Iroh’s there, forcing himself in between them. Yue didn’t realize how close they were. Their noses had almost been touching. Yue’s crying, heaving sobs, right hand fastened around her bloody dagger. Zuko is close to tears himself, bright red from screaming. The ground under his feet is charred.

“You two need to go,” Iroh says. “ _Now._ Follow Katara and get out of here!” 

Katara is halfway out of the cavern, pushing herself and Aang’s limp body through a new hole in the ceiling with frantic tendrils of water. The Dai Li are scattered, a combination of Iroh’s devastating blows and Katara’s raw power. Azula is melting her way out of a massive shell of ice. 

They lost. They _failed_.

Azula won. 

“ _Go,”_ Iroh booms. Zuko grits his teeth, nods to Iroh, clasps Yue’s hand and starts running. 

“Wait,” Yue gasps. She can’t leave Iroh. She has to ( _pull away run safe_ ) be there for him! _“Iroh!”_

Iroh’s gentle, proud smile is the last of him Yue sees before Zuko pulls her from the cave. 


	3. Fire Nation Tour Time (or: Yue pulls an epic gamer move)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> zuko: oh no it's an emotionally vulnerable moment what do I do  
> zuko: you want me to buy you something
> 
> this one's shorter than the rest bc the invasion doesn't have the same flow so I ended the chapter here  
> also bc life is a party and im the pinata rn lol

The weeks after Ba Sing Se falls pass in a blur. Flying on a giant, fluffy bison named Appa. Introducing Katara and her friends to Xīng. Rendezvouing with a fleet of Southern Water Tribe ships. Pulling the Water Tribe royalty card to convince Chief Hakoda Zuko can be trusted. Stealing a Fire Nation cruiser. 

(Sokka almost slipped off the boat when he heard the girl he kept referring to as “Suspicious Character” is high-ranking Water Tribe. Even now he doesn’t entirely believe her).

Zuko is instrumental to the Fire Nation cover. He knows all the protocols, the “flag language” ships use to communicate, which flares are for what, and how to keep the boiler running. It’s captivating, watching him in his element. The constant tension in his shoulders leeches away with each passing compliment from Aang’s friends or the tribesmen. Yue’s even spotted him talking to Chief Hakoda about Water Tribe traditions. She’s so _proud_ of him. 

Travel is smooth. The water is almost unnaturally placid, barely shifting under the boat. Any enemy ship is pushed away with ferocious waves or unexpected whirlpools before they can spot the cruiser. Every once in a awhile, huge fish breach and land themselves on the deck, perfect for eating.

La is a sweet friend.

Yue does her best to be helpful, but it’s difficult to find anything to _do_. The ship is in good condition, and Katara’s waterbending heals Aang better than Yue’s herbs ever could. She finds herself wasting time on deck more often than not, scribbling fragments of poetry about La or calculating the current longitude and latitude. 

That’s where she is when Aang runs her over. 

“Zuko’s friend?” Aang says, tangled with Yue’s limbs.

“Avatar Aang?” Yue says, pencil poking against her arm.

“Meep?” Xīng says, freshly awoken from a nap and extremely confused. 

Aang then passes out for another two hours, returning to the deck after Katara and Sokka brief him on the situation. Zuko and Toph accompany him. 

“Is anyone else seeing the flying rabbit?” Aang asks. 

“That’s Xīng,” Zuko responds. He’s visibly uncomfortable talking to the avatar. He’s also covered in soot, charcoal-gray smudges streaking across his face and clothes. Yue resists the urge to wipe it off.

“Right.”

To end the awkward stare-off between Aang and Zuko, Yue bows and says, “It’s an honor to meet you again, avatar.” Xīng copies her movements. 

Aang bows back. With his hair, he looks years younger, and he already looked young. Yue is swamped with guilt. The whole world is pinning their hopes on a _baby_. He should be enjoying his childhood, not shouldering the expectations of generations. 

Sokka explains the plan: make their way through the Fire Nation on foot (and on Appa), reunite with the fleet the morning of a solar eclipse, invade the capital. Zuko mentions that Azula’s presence in Ba Sing Se means she could know about the invasion, but Sokka insists that the eclipse is too big an advantage to pass up. “We can’t scrap an entire invasion plan on the chance they know we’re coming. We have to try.”

The cruiser reaches a remote Fire Nation shore the next day without incident. Katara and Sokka say goodbye to their father, who hugs them and tells them how _proud_ he is.

Yue wonders if her father would be proud. Zuko’s isn’t. The thought makes her grab his hand. She squeezes and he reciprocates. 

“We should find disguises,” Zuko says after tribesmen leave. The group steals from clotheslines, and Yue is beyond caring about the moral repercussions of thievery at this point. The dresses are a bit too revealing for her taste, so she snatches a pink tunic top and a dark skirt. Yue pulls her hair into two long, braided pigtails, tying them at the base of her skull with shiny gold ribbon. 

Zuko shows everyone around the nearest town, cringing each time Aang refers to someone as “hotman.” 

“Stop _saying_ that. Your friend _lied_ to you, no one has _ever said that_ in the history of the Fire Nation.” 

“Whatever you say, hotman.”

Yue snorts. Her new friends have enthusiastically joined in on teasing Zuko. Katara is especially effective, likely from years of practice as the younger sibling.

“Yue,” Zuko hands her a paper bag. Inside is some sort of food. It’s crumbly, and when Yue grabs some it stains her hands red. “Try these. They’re seasoned corn flakes.”

Flashing a smile, Yue pops a handful into her mouth. How sweet, he bought her -

_Spirits_. 

It was like eating _fire_. Yue gags, eyes streaming. Her tongue - no, her entire _face_ was numb but also _burning_ at the same time. _“What. Are those,”_ she wheezes, fanning her face. 

Zuko’s eyes hold no mercy. “Fire flakes.” This is revenge. He’s avenging himself. Weeks of ribbing has driven him to the breaking point, and now he’s chosen to kill her with seasoned corn flakes. “There’s plenty more food to show you,” he says, and Yue knows that’s not a promise. It’s a threat.

Xīng eats the rest of the fire flakes, impervious to the horrors that are Fire Nation spices.

Aang goes missing halfway through the tour and doesn’t reappear until long past dark, strolling into the cave they’re camping in covered in blast burns. “Hey guys!” 

“Where have you _been?!_ ” Sokka shifts into lecturing mode. Yue can tell he’s used the same tone to scold Katara over and over, because she straightens when he starts talking as if she’s the one in trouble. 

“I was at school! And then some kids invited me to play hide and explode!”

“School?” Katara repeats.

“Hide and _explode?”_ Yue echoes.

“Yeah, so apparently this is a school uniform, and I got in trouble for skipping class.” Aang says. “Also, I’m going back tomorrow!”

Zuko drops his head into his hands. Yue just stares. The rest of the group explodes in opposition, but in the end Aang wins, citing things like secret tunnels and reaching the future generation.

_“Is_ there a secret tunnel into the palace?” Yue asks Zuko before she falls asleep.

“Absolutely not.”

Aang’s time at school culminates in a secret dance party. Yue’s mental image of the avatar as a serious, all-powerful entity is dissolving with each and every second she’s with Aang. She and Zuko spend the party sitting back drinking punch. 

“What was your school like?” Seeing all these stressed out children makes Yue wonder how Zuko’s education went. Was he a model student? A trouble-maker? 

Zuko raises his eyebrow. “I was taught by tutors at home. Father didn’t want me embarrassing him at the Royal Fire Nation Academy for Boys.” Xīng nudges him as he says this, either reassuring him he wasn’t an embarrassment or trying to sneak a sip of punch.

“I was tutored at home, too. Although my father did so because he worried I was too frail for school with other children.”

“Well if you can’t handle fire flakes...” Is this really happening? Is Zuko turning the tables? Teasing her? Yue gasps in offense, but she can’t hide her smile. 

What a dork. 

-

“What do you _mean_ she _wouldn’t come home.”_

“Exactly what I said! I told her to come home and she got all bent out of shape and ran off!”

Chief Arnook groans and massages his temples. Yue? His sweet, demure, obedient daughter? There has to be more going on. Ever since she left, the koi in the oasis have refused to accept food from him. It’s as if they’re angry, but they’re _fish_. Sacred fish that represent the spirits, but fish nonetheless. They probably can’t tell their visitors apart, let alone hold _grudges_. 

“Was there _anyone_ with her? _Anything_ suspicious?” 

Han shrugs. “I dunno, she seemed close to this waiter guy with an ugly burn scar on his face. And her boss was _crazy,_ he-“

“What did the burn scar look like?” The likelihood a waiter in a tea shop is the scarred prince of the Fire Nation who happened to break in only weeks after Yue vanished is nigh to impossible, but Arnook can’t help but remember the boy that snuck into his heavily-fortified city using _tiger-seal airholes._

“Uh, gross? It was over one eye, messed his ear up too, all red and stuff. Sort of hand-shaped.”

“...What did the boss look like?” Please don’t say-

“Old guy, fat, gray hair, actually he might’ve been related to the scar dude. Both had gold eyes.”

Tui and La. His daughter had been captured by the disgraced prince of the Fire Nation and the Dragon of the West.

-

At some point in the night, the river Appa is carrying them through shifts from muddy to clogged, viscous, reeking goo. 

“What’s wrong with the water?” It’s almost painful to see. The water in the North is clear and fresh and doesn’t smell like rot. Yue’s never seen anything like this. She’s also never seen Xīng act so erratic; they keep making clicking noises and wandering in circles on Appa’s saddle. 

There’s a village resting on the water a ways up. The people there are emaciated and sick from eating poisoned fish and living on a toxic river. It’s horrifying. 

“There need to be regulations for this,” Zuko mutters to himself. “Rules to keep the environment from being ruined.”

Yue agrees. 

Appa winds up sick as well from the water, so the group makes camp at a riverbank around the bend. Yue’s dreams are all wrong. Instead of La, she sees a woman in a tattered veil who shakes her by her shoulders and begs her to save them. The woman is crying, and Yue is too when she wakes up. Xīng keens, facing towards the village.

“I don’t know what she wants me to do,” Yue admits to Zuko the next morning. “I don’t even know who she is, but I want to help her.”

“About that,” Zuko says. 

He then informs her that he and Katara have been feeding Appa weird berries until he’s too full to move, and using the delay to sneak medical supplies into the village. 

“Do you think it’ll be enough?” Yue asks, worried about the long-term. She completely misses the way Zuko’s eyes drift into the distance. She _doesn’t_ miss the smoking wreck that used to be the steel mill when she wakes up the next day.

Sokka is beside himself. “You _trashed_ the steel _mill?!”_

“It was your idea!” Katara is dressed like the village’s patron spirit, the Painted Lady. Next to her, Zuko’s wearing his all-black outfit under a dark, hooded cloak. They’re sitting on the ground, sporting twin expressions of righteous outrage and indignance.

“You did say the only way to stop the pollution permanently was to blow up the steel mill,” Aang says. 

_“I was JOKING!”_

Of course, ruining the factory has the military knocking on the village’s door. It takes some quick thinking, but they manage to fight the soldiers off by pulling an elaborate spirit hoax. Katara plays her part flawlessly, summoning spooky mist and using her waterbending to destroy the soldier’s fancy boats. 

She’s so awesome. 

The villagers find out Katara is a waterbender, but at the end of the day it’s hard to care when she just saved their village. Everyone pitches in to clean out the river before the gang leaves, and with each ounce of pollution removed Xīng calms just a bit more. Yue could swear she sees the woman from her dreams smiling in the distance when they say their goodbyes. 

“That was fun!” Yue admits. Pulling an elaborate spirit-hoax to scare off military officials is not something she ever thought she’d be involved in, but if given the chance she absolutely would do it again. 

Xīng beeps in agreement.

-

There’s a meteor shower a few days after the river incident. It’s wonderful, streaks of white and blue flashing across the sky. Yue’s seen aurora borealis before, but never shooting stars. It’s an entirely different type of beauty. 

“Does this happen all the time here?” Yue and Zuko are lying next to each other, alongside the rest of the group. 

“Mostly in the summer.”

The show is interrupted by a stray meteor crash-landing, just shy of crushing them, setting the nearby area ablaze. Katara, Aang, Toph, and Zuko immediately leap into action. Toph smothers the flames with stones, Zuko puts out the fires with a breath, Katara manages to create snow, and Aang sucks away the fire’s oxygen. 

Sokka, Momo, Xīng, and Yue stamp out stray flames with their feet. Momo manages to put more fire out than Sokka and Yue combined. It’s depressing. 

So depressing it keeps Yue up most of the night. It’s not that she’s upset her friends are brilliant, talented individuals! It’s just. Compared to them, what did Yue have to offer? A dagger? Any bender worth their salt is a better fighter than someone with a dagger. A chest full of medicinal herbs? Katara can heal almost anything with a pouch of water. Vague spiritual knowledge? Aang’s the bridge between worlds. 

The only time Yue truly feels like her actions matter, like she’s contributing, is when she throws her life on the line for the greater good. Or at least, for what she considers more important than her. The problem is, Yue sees most things as more important than her. Her friends? Her family? Her people? The avatar? They all take precedence. The one time she put herself first was when she ran from her engagement, and she still struggles with guilt over that, even though Han is a _monster_. 

Is Zuko right? Does she not value her life?

Does she _want_ to die?

...No. _No_. Yue doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to leave her friends, her father. La would be upset. So would Zuko, and Iroh, and everyone else. She’d never get to eat hot buns again. Never feed the koi. Never give Xīng ear rubs. 

Yue can safely say she doesn’t want to die. 

But she can’t say she considers herself _worth_ the space she takes up. 

-

“Bring me the avatar’s corpse.” Azula doesn’t need to threaten him. The fear her presence commands is enough.

The assassin bows in assent, metal arm gleaming under the moonlight.

-

Being back in the Fire Nation after three years of exile is... _frustrating_. Zuko rarely left the capital before he was banished. Now he’s travelling the entire nation, and every stop leaves him angrier than the last. Starving people, rampant pollution, unimaginable wealth-gaps. Villages that previously survived on agriculture or livestock crumbling while mecas of weapon production thrive. There’s so much he needs to _fix_. His people are suffering and he’s powerless to help them. 

No one recognizes him. Apparently random Earth Kingdom citizens know more about his situation than residents of his own country. 

Siding with the avatar was _the most impulsive_ decision Zuko’s ever made. That’s not to say he regrets it; the pride on Uncle’s face when he threw his lot in with the avatar - Aang - almost made years of struggling at sea worth it. Zuko wants Uncle to look at them that way forever, and he can’t ignore what the Fire Nation is doing. 

(If Yue had been at the North when Zhao attacked, would she have been safe? Zuko can’t condone a war that could kill Yue. He just can’t).

It’s weird to be travelling with the avatar. He spent months chasing them across the world, and now he’s helping Katara and Yue cook dinner, strategizing with Sokka, commiserating about childhood as nobility with Toph, arguing with _the avatar_ about cultural norms. 

Even weirder, he _enjoys_ it.

He’s an enemy of his own nation, hiding in plain sight, plotting to help kill his own father, and he’s happier than he’s been in years. 

Maybe Yue and Uncle were onto something when they suggested he make some friends...

Speaking of Yue, ever since the meteor shower she’d seemed off. She didn’t even react when Xīng ate her barbecued cow-pig on a stick right out of her hand. When Sokka admitted he felt useless compared to everyone else, she didn’t leap to reassure him. 

Yue _always_ reassures people. _Especially_ Sokka, who she views as some kind of genius. 

_Sokka_. The guy who got _two fishhooks_ stuck in his thumb. 

Katara takes the group shopping to cheer Sokka up. In the bow and arrow isle of the weapons shop, Zuko approaches Yue.

“Are you okay?” 

Yue blinks at him. “I... need to apologize to you.”

This is not what Zuko expected. “What?”

“You were right. Back in Ba Sing Se, in the caves. I- I keep throwing myself into danger because otherwise it feels like I’m not contributing enough. I don’t- compared to everyone else I’m not-“ Yue huffs. “So, I’m sorry. If I do that again, I want you to yell at me.” 

_“What?!”_

“I can’t keep- keep _martyring_ myself. It’s not fair to you, or anyone else. I’m going to work on it, to find other ways to be useful, but if you see me slipping, say so. Please.” 

Zuko suddenly feels exposed, like he’s standing on a train in Ba Sing Se naked. This is an emotional conversation. Yue’s trusting him with this. What does he say? 

When in doubt, turn to what can talk for you. “Okay. I will. Do you want. To get a weapon? Maybe something with more range than a dagger?” 

Yue smiles at him, the smile that makes her eyes soften and her dimples appear and generally makes her look radiant. “Good idea.”

Xīng high-fives him with their tiny paw when Yue’s not looking. 

Uncle would be so proud. 

-

Yue winds up buying a kusarigama. It’s a sickle, and attached to the handle is a chain with a weight at the end, like the bolas hunters use back home. Zuko says the chain is swung above the user’s head, then thrown towards the enemy’s weapon to disarm them.

It’s oppressively hot, but Yue practices nonstop with Zuko while Sokka gets sword training. Toph joins in on occasion, tossing rocks her way to dodge without losing control of the chain. By the time the gang heads over to see Piandao award Sokka his new, super-cool space sword (sans Zuko, who Piandao is bound to recognize), Yue’s comfortable wielding her new weapon.

Sokka fights Piandao as a final test, although no one knows it’s a test until the end. Yue can’t help but wonder why a high-ranking member of the Fire Nation is comfortable arming an enemy of the state, until he gives them a lotus tile as a parting gift.

_Oh_. The White Lotus strikes again. 

-

The Fire Nation is comprised of five major islands, with dozens of nameless ones dotting the coast. This means the Fire Nation has an insane amount of beachfront. Unlike at the North Pole, the majority of Fire Nation citizens swim in the ocean for fun. This is because swimming in the Fire Nation involves relief from the horrid heat, soft sand underfoot, and refreshingly cool water. Not frostbite. 

Aang tries to convince everyone a beach day is just what’s needed. The group does decide to spend the day at the beach (and it’s a beautiful beach: tidepools, reefs brimming with reds and blues and yellows visible from above the water), but Zuko says the non-flammable area and abundant water is perfect to start Aang’s firebending training, so Aang doesn’t get his day of frolicking in the ocean. 

Yue swims for an hour. It’s not something she’s done before, besides splashing in the oasis as a child. She knows how to swim - lessons are mandatory, in case waterbending practice goes wrong nearby or ice is thinner than it seems - but she doesn’t leave the shallows. The water cradles her body, parts around her as she moves like waves at the front of a canoe. Yue images it’s La, hugging her.

After a while she realizes she’s the only one still swimming. Katara is watching Aang’s lesson, cheering him on. Toph is practicing sandbending; Xīng is asleep on a castle she made, draped across the top like a rag. Sokka is alone, crouched over his massive schedule, scribbling frantically. 

Wading back onto the beach, Yue wanders over to Sokka. “How does the schedule look?”

“Not... great... maybe if we cut out lunch for the next three days... or make camp an hour later and get up an hour earlier...” the schedule was covered in scribbles, ink bleeding together, arrows and math in the margins. It reeked of desperation, the kind that drives people to micromanage anything within reach because the rest is a sinkhole of uncertainty. 

“Um,” Yue crouches down next to him. “This might be silly, but... are you okay?”

Sokka’s pencil freezes on the page. “I’m fine, I just- don’t wanna lose anyone, you know?”

Yue glances over to where Zuko is. He’s kneeling, hands cupped, a tiny flame dancing on his palms while he goes through the fundamentals of breathing. Aang stares at the flame, anxious, but he’s trying. Zuko’s so _patient_ with him. He’s a bit rough around the edges, but it’s clear he has a hidden talent nurturing people. 

“Yes,” Yue agrees. 

-

“Zuko was always destined to aid the avatar. He’s my great-grandson after all.”

Aang’s face glowed. Roku knew he’d just stolen hours of peace from his descendant. 

-

Toph scams over 30,000 yen before Katara finds the wanted poster. 

“ _What_ have you been _doing?!”_ Katara angrily shakes the wanted poster in Toph’s face. The sheer rage has apparently made her forget Toph can’t see. 

Zuko, Sokka, and Aang stand to the side. Sokka bought a hawk, which is currently being held in one of Xīng’s hands. Momo is in the other. Both are screaming and trying to reach each other with intent to kill. Aang has an entire sack of treats for Appa. 

The hot buns Zuko bought Yue were eaten long ago. Before she knew they were payed for with _dirty money._

(They tasted delicious, though).

Toph and Katara have a massive blowout. Zuko goes after Katara while Sokka goes after Toph. Yue doesn’t know what they talked about, but when they all come back Katara wants to pull a scam. 

Of course, a man who can make things explode shows up and ruins everything. He’s a firebender, but there’s no fire. He just stares intently and grunts and his line of sight combusts. It’s similar to Zuko’s exploding lightning, but directed. Controlled. 

Long story short, the final scam doesn’t work out.

-

Horror stories are _fun_. “The woman smiled, serene among the corpses of fallen warriors. Despite the mutilated state of the bodies, the snow was pure white. _Oh husband,_ she sung, turning to face him. _I’ve found plenty of meat for dinner._ Then her smile grew, stretching until it wrapped around her entire face, opening wider and _wider_ -“

“Stop! Stop! We get it! Northern Water Tribe stories are scarier, no need to keep going!” Sokka tightens his grip on his sleeping bag. He’s wrapped himself up so only his head is exposed. Yue neglects to mention she’s making the story up as she goes along. Spending time with La gives her plenty of creepy material to work with. 

Katara is covering Aang’s ears. Xīng has burrowed their way into Zuko’s shirt. As has Momo. Zuko is staring at her in mild horror. Only Toph remains invested, palms on her knees as she leans forward, grinning.

Then her grin wavers, freezes, and falls. “Wait, did you hear that?” 

“No, no no no no _no_. I am _not_ falling for that.” If Sokka tugs on his sleeping bag any more, it might tear. 

“I’m serious, I hear something. It sounds like screaming.”

“WHAT?” Aang shouts. His ears are still covered. Katara flinches and drops her hands. 

A branch snaps in the dark. This isn’t unusual - plenty of animals live in the woods. Snapping noises are a part of camping. Sokka, heart already racing, screams regardless. Katara screams because he screams, and then everyone is screaming as an old woman wanders into their campsite. 

“Hello,” the old woman says. “My name is Hama.” Hama invites everyone to stay in her inn, for free, which wins out against staying in the woods after Toph heard mysterious screams. The inn’s beds are soft, the blankets heavy, and Yue is out like a light within second of crawling under the covers. 

She wakes up in the middle of the night, thoughts ( _run run run_ ) racing. She’s exhausted but she can’t fall back asleep, rolling around in her bed for who knows how long. Xīng isn’t with her. Yue needs the reassurance their warm presence brings, so she wanders into Zuko’s room and finds Xīng nestled against Zuko’s neck. 

It’s late. Yue’s not about to wake Xīng up when they look so comfortable, and it isn’t as if she’s never slept near Zuko before. Maybe not in the same bed, but it’s not a big deal. Instead Yue slips under the blankets, curls forward so that her forehead is pressed against Xīng’s back, and slips back into sleep.

The next time she opens her eyes, the bed is dipping. Zuko is sliding off his side as slow as possible. He cringes when he realizes she’s awake. “Sorry.”

“Not a problem,” Yue sits and stretches. Xīng is splayed across Zuko’s pillow, dead to the world. “Sorry I barged in, I couldn’t sleep.”

“It’s kind of a creepy house,” Zuko says. 

“I suppose I’m not used to sleeping alone anymore.” After months sleeping in the same room as Iroh and Zuko, followed by weeks with tens of soldiers, and now camping in a group every night, going to bed alone felt isolating. Nerve-wracking. “I miss Iroh.”

Zuko sighs in agreement. “If anyone can handle my father and Azula, it’s Uncle. I’m sure he’s fine.”

“Right.”

Hama takes the gang shopping. It’s silly, since they’re nothing alike, but Katara and Hama both have the same sort of presence. Two lights in a dark room, even though they’re different candles.

The town is buzzing with gossip. People are going missing at night, during the full moon. Townsfolk cast wary looks at the sky at whisper to themselves as Yue walks by.

( _Run run run_ ).

The group returns to the inn. Sokka goes snooping through the attic. Zuko eggs him on. Katara and Yue trail after them and ineffectually insist they stop. It all culminates when Hama returns and shows them an old comb. 

A Water Tribe comb. 

She’s from the Southern Water Tribe, a survivor of the raids targeting waterbenders. Dinner is imitation Water Tribe cuisine; Hama knew Sokka and Katara were from the south the entire time. Sokka, Katara, and Yue dig in, cheerily talking about things they miss from home, although Yue offers less to the conversation. She’s from the north, so she doesn’t want to intrude too much. Her experiences are drastically different in significant ways. 

Aang and Zuko warn Toph off of most dishes. Yue politely pretends she doesn’t notice, and offers Zuko more ocean kumquats just to watch him squirm as he tries to decline. 

Hama offers to teach Katara traditional Southern-style bending. Yue is thrilled for her - this is an amazing, rare opportunity - it’s just that Yue can’t shake the feeling ( _run danger run_ ) something is _off_. Maybe it’s spirits.

While Katara and Hama train the next day, the rest of the group investigate the disappearances. 

“Maybe the moon spirit just turned evil?” Toph wonders. 

“Tui wouldn’t do that!” 

Xīng gnashes their teeth.

Toph puts her hands up in surrender. “Okay, no evil moon spirit. Gotcha.”

Whatever is stealing townspeople, it seems it compels them to the mountain outside of town, according to an old man who insists he isn’t old. Toph puts the dots together, realizes the screaming she heard was the captives, and suddenly the group is rushing to the mountain. 

It’s chilling to see tens of people: men, women, children, the elderly, all strung up by the wrists in tattered, soiled clothes. It’s worse to hear the perpetrator is Hama.

“Go find Katara. I’ve got this.” Toph gets to work bending the cuffs open. The captive townspeople are beyond caring about the implications of a metalbender.

Katara and Hama are fighting when they arrive, all-out combat with moves Yue never could’ve imagined. Ripping water from trees, pulling it from the humid air-

Bending blood. 

Zuko, Sokka, and Aang are dragged forward. Yue feels the tug, the compulsion, but somehow doesn’t move. ( _My power my gift my choice_ ). Katara is forced to weave between Zuko and Sokka’s swords, as well as Aang’s punches. Katara succeeds at first, because she’s beyond skilled, but the fight reaches a point where there’s no way she can avoid her friends _and_ prevent them from impaling one another. 

So she uses bloodbending herself, and forces Hama to the ground.

The buzz. The hum, the- the _energy_ Yue always senses from Katara, from Hama. She abruptly realizes what it is. _Waterbending_. Under the full moon it’s brimming, churning and spilling over in the waterbenders’ bodies. 

( _My gift your gift_ ).

Iroh’s instruction on lightning redirection pushes to the forefront of her mind. 

Yue reaches for Hama’s power, letting it wash over her until she’s drenched in it. She pulls, like it’s a thread, a blanket unwravelling. More and more pours from Hama. Yue worries she’ll be pulling forever, until there’s a indescribable _shift_. 

“What...” Hama stares at her hands. At the moon. At her hands. At Yue. She tries to bend, but the water barely moves. “My bending, what... what did you _do?!”_ She lunges towards her, clawed hands outstretched. 

( _My gift your gift your choice_ ).

Katara slaps Hama away with a rope of water, shaking. 

“You don’t understand!” Hama is wailing as Toph and the townspeople arrive. “They took us away from our home! They locked us away to _die!_ They deserve this! _They deserve this!”_

And Hama’s right. Yue doesn’t understand. She can’t. Hama is a victim of the waterbending genocide, but unlike Katara she saw the fates of everyone taken away. She sat in captivity for spirits knows how long. Yue will never know what she went through. How waterbending - _bloodbending_ \- became her one tool for retribution. Her one connection to home. 

At the same time, however complicit some townspeople may have been, there was nothing to prove their guilt besides their nationality. Some of her captives were children, complete innocents who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hama didn’t just punish her tormentors; she lashed out at anyone. She even attacked Katara in the end.

Yue pities her. 

Katara collapses to the soaking ground, sobbing. Seeing a fellow victim commit acts so horrible, having a terrifying ability forced on her by someone she trusted and admired, using the ability against the one other survivor? 

Yue pities Katara more.


	4. Invading the Fire Nation (or: Han makes an oopsie)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have not had power for almost a week i legit had this finished right before the storm hit and then was stuck staring at an unpublished chapter for eternity do not recommend   
> it's the invasion! lowkey short bc really the invasion and its immediate aftermath has it's own feel and the tone shift between a failed invasion and a field trip to dragonland is beyond my ability to write in the same chapter

Aang isn’t sleeping. 

The invasion is in four days. Everyone is on edge in their own way, but Aang is floundering under the pressure. Why wouldn’t he? He’s _twelve_. He’s not even ice-dodging age (although Katara mentioned taking him along for Sokka’s), and he’s expected to kill a dictator from a long line of dictators while the only family he has fights foot soldiers outside the palace. Yue doesn’t know much about the Air Nomads, but from what Aang’s mentioned, they were pacifists. 

_Pacifists_. Spirits, that one word evolved their mass-slaughter into an entirely new level of evil.

Aang is the last airbender. The last person in the world subscribing to the Air Nomads’ ideology. And the world is asking him to disregard that. 

So it’s no surprise when he wakes up every other hour screaming about missing pants or math or Sokka’s rock-climbing skills for two straight days. 

“You could try talking to La? They always calm me down,” Yue suggests. Toph’s “massage therapy” isn’t working. Neither is Katara’s yoga or Sokka’s therapy or Zuko’s tried-and-true technique of yelling at the sky. 

Aang lies down and stays asleep for fifteen minutes. His tattooes start to glow. Yue crouches over him, searching for a sign that reads _being counseled by La_. 

Aang jerks upwards, awake, shouting, “ _no!_ No thank you, no thanks, no.”

This isn’t what Yue expected. “What did they say?”

“They offered to sink the entire Fire Nation.”

“Please don’t accept that,” Zuko says from where he’s cooking lunch. 

Ah. Perhaps Yue should’ve expected La’s general apathy toward human life would lead to a less than ideal suggestion. “Sorry.” 

What can they do to help? How can they make this easier for Aang? Is it even possible? There are so many things for him to be stressed over; besides the crushing expectations and the cultural conflict, he’s nowhere near mastering firebending. He’s too skittish to keep a flame going, let alone manipulate it.

Sokka insists firebending doesn’t matter anyway, because of the eclipse, but knowing Aang he’s still obsessing over it.

Aang’s refusal to sleep escalates to the point where he hallucinates a sword fight between Appa and Momo. Yue struggles to balance attempts at helping him and experimentation with her recently discovered ability. 

Yue can’t waterbend. She can’t bend, period. By some grace of Tui’s, she _can_ affect the strength of waterbending, just like the phases of the moon. It takes focus, but Yue is able to act like a miniature moon of her own: powering up Katara’s bending (or powering down Hama’s). 

Sokka calls it “freaky spirit powers.” Zuko insists he stop calling her ability freaky. 

She’s not sure if she can aid multiple waterbenders at a time; Aang’s energy is too different for her to work with. She can barely sense anything from him. Yue supposes it’s because he’s the avatar. Not only that, his original element is air. 

Yue needs more plain waterbenders to work out a solid understanding of her ability. For now, she’s sticking with boosting Katara’s power as much as she can. When they invade the capital, Yue will stick close to her. As long as she can see Katara, she can strengthen Katara, and they need all the strength they can get.

The day before the invasion, the gang gets together to shear every koala-sheep on the island. They gather the wool into the largest, most comfortable bed possible. Then they each take turns reassuring Aang from the heart. 

“I’m proud of you,” Yue says, despite the fact that her strongest emotion regarding Aang is overwhelming guilt. He shouldn’t be expected to do this. Yue is a leader, and sending a child to war feels _wrong_ in every sense of the word. 

She is proud of him, though. So proud. It’s humbling to see a boy who’s lost everything still capable of a genuine smile. 

The group sleeps in one massive pile on the bed that night. Yue is privately glad she has an excuse to sleep cuddled up to Zuko again. He’s so warm, and he makes her feel safe and secure and content. 

Yue falls asleep with a sigh, missing the way Zuko stares at her before falling asleep himself.

-

A very dramatic problem makes itself known the morning of the eclipse. 

Among the ships rendezvousing for the invasion is the _Aqeutac_ fleet, a group of three Northern Water Tribe boats manned by the best warriors in the Tribe. No one was told they would be helping, so Sokka is forced to reorganize the troop groupings on the fly. Also, among them are Han and her father. 

Her _father_. Chief Arnook left the North to participate. While Yue loves her father and is glad to see him well, leaving to fight a battle that he could be killed in with a missing heir is insane. The political upheaval that could result in his death... 

Arnook doesn’t greet her. Instead he storms off the boat, murder in his eyes, right toward Zuko. “ _You_ ,” he snarls, all cold rage and righteous fury. In one hand is a spear, white bone gleaming in the morning sun. 

“Him?” Aang says. 

“Look, I know he broke into the North and all, but he’s on our side now!” Sokka tries to calm Arnook down and prevent Zuko from being skewered. Han is watching from the boat, grinning. 

“You kidnapped my _daughter_ ,” it’s like Arnook can’t hear Sokka at all. There’s a moment of silence while everyone digests what he said. 

“What.” Zuko says. 

“What?!” Sokka cries out, tearing at his hair. 

Toph starts laughing. “Sparky can’t even say no to Momo, there’s no way he could kidnap someone!”

“Father, what are you talking about?” Yue inserts herself between Arnook and Zuko. 

“You think I wouldn’t put it together?” Arnook glares over Yue’s shoulder at Zuko, who’s completely dumbstruck. “You invade my home, only weeks after my daughter vanishes? Did you _force_ her to tell you how to get in? Did you lie, claim you wouldn’t hurt anyone if she cooperated?”

Zuko loses his patience. “I didn’t even _meet_ her until after Zhao’s _stupid_ attack, which I _wasn’t a part of_. Maybe if you’d _listened_ when Yue said she was being _harassed_ , she wouldn’t have _run away from you.”_

Arnook pushes Yue aside and lunges forward, spear aimed at Zuko’s gut. Zuko scrambles backwards, giving Yue enough time to whip out her kusarigama and disarm her father before he impales her best friend. 

“Father, stop it!” The spear thuds against the dirt at her feet, wrapped in her weapon’s chain. “Zuko didn’t kidnap me! I left of my own volition.” 

Her father stares at her as if he’s never seen her before. “You...” He doesn’t know where to start. Yue raised her voice at him. Yue has evidently learned to fight with a weapon - two if the knife on her belt is any indication - and she’s claiming to have left home willingly? _His_ daughter? She would have said something, asked for permission, not- not _willingly broken_ the traditions of the North to wander around with the _prince_ of the _Fire Nation_. “Yue... _why?_ ” 

Yue lowers her gaze. It doesn’t make sense, but she’s ashamed to explain her reasoning. Han’s burning eyes consume what little determination to plead her case Yue has left. Besides, her father didn't believe her before. Why would now be any different? Zuko holds her hand from behind, but it’s too late. She’s folded. “I didn’t feel safe. I’m sorry, Father.”

“Didn’t feel _safe_ , Yue what-“

Hakoda calls the strategy meeting, effectively ending the conversation. Xīng nuzzles her neck and Zuko squeezes her hand in reassurance. She squeezes back, entire body thrumming with nervous energy.

Han leers at her the entire meeting. Zuko and Katara throw him death stares the whole time, but he’s undeterred. 

“Yue-“ Han tries the second the briefing is over. 

Katara steers Yue away by the shoulders. “ _No_ ,” she says to Han, practically hissing. 

Sokka runs up to them, elbowing Han aside on the way over without a second thought. He’s sweaty and shaking from his speech. “Was it as bad it is seemed? It seemed really bad.”

“No, you did amazing!” Yue insists. 

At the same time, Zuko deadpans, “it was bad.”

Sokka wilts. “Great. Great, yeah, that’s great. Yue, Dad and I made sure the _Aqeutac_ is assigned faaaaaar away from you.”

The thought she could share a unit with Han hadn’t even occurred to her. “ _Thank you._ ”

“Everybody to the boats!” Hakoda calls. Soldiers filter into their ships. Yue and Zuko go with Aang’s group, as well as Hakoda, a man with odd eyebrows, his kid, the largest man Yue’s ever seen, and another small child. 

Han tries to talk to her again as they board, but Toph shoves him out of the way. There’s so much strength in her wiry twelve-year-old arms. 

Sokka’s genius is on full display today. The fleet is used as a distraction for the Fire Nation navy while the crew board hollow metal capsules that can maneuver underwater. Sokka invented them! It’s awe-inspiring, looking out a window and seeing fish swim past, seaweed and coral and not a hint of dry land. 

It is for Yue, anyway. Toph and a few others wind up violently ill. Not everyone has their sea legs. 

The capsules resurface for twenty minutes to refill the air supply. Zuko and Yue spend the time on the fenced-in top, sharpening their weapons.

“Are you going to be okay?” Yue asks him. She’s not talking about fighting; he can handle himself. Yue’s worried about the toll invading his own home, attempting to kill his own family, will take. 

Zuko doesn’t look up from his swords. “I’ll have to be.” That doesn’t inspire much confidence, but Yue can’t expect him to be fully on board no matter what war crimes he sees. This is his family. Or at least his sister; Zuko holds little love for his father. “What about you? Are you going to be able to focus knowing that creep is here?”

Yue laughs. There’s no humor behind it. “I’ll have to be.” 

The two of them sit silently, just the scraping sound of sharpening metal filling the air between them. Yue is terrified. She’s never been in a full-out battle between armies. Ba Sing Se was more a coup than an invasion; half the key players were turncoats and the fight itself wasn’t exactly orchestrated. This is different. Months of planning have lead up to this. Warriors from the Earth Kingdom and both tribes are here to work in tandem. 

This could end the war for good. 

Yue could die here. Zuko could die here. Or her father, or Katara, or any of her friends. 

“I’m scared,” she admits. It feels dirty to say. She chose to fight. Is she proving her home’s beliefs right by quaking in terror while other warriors stand tall? Is she truly not made for this? 

“That’s good. Fear keeps you alive.” Zuko doesn’t view her as weak. She’s his equal. If Zuko says fear is good, she believes him.

“...Promise me we’ll see each other after this?”

“Promise.”

-

The capsules arrive at the capital far too soon. Before she saw the shore, Yue could pretend the fight would never come. Now it’s here, impossible to ignore. 

There’s a lurch when the capsules hit sand. Yue’s heart is thundering, fingers and toes numb, stomach cramping. Everyone files out of the capsules to attack, and suddenly Yue’s in a war zone. 

Her job is to stick with Katara and a group of waterbenders from the Earth Kingdom. Zuko heads off with Aang to lead him into the palace. Xīng follows him, per her instruction, because he’ll need them more than she will. She prays to Tui that he comes back safe. 

Enemy soldiers swarm like flies to rotten meat. Yue is crouched on the balls of her feet, ready to dodge when needed, kusarigama held tight in one sweaty hand and the chain in the other. In the back of her mind she can feel Katara’s energy, the energy shared by the other waterbenders, and she pushes it as hard as she can. 

( _Grow surge shift push pull_ ).

It works. Katara’s bending becomes faster, stronger, tougher. The other waterbenders cry out in amazement as their bending flourishes. It seems Yue _can_ boost multiple waterbenders.

Keeping her eyes open and head on a swivel, Yue picks out targets. Soldiers with spears are the easiest - plenty of surface area for the chain to wrap around. Swords are harder, but doable. Maces are surprisingly convenient: the large, round tips keep the chain from sliding off. Anyone who breaks through the circle of waterbenders finds Yue’s sickle waiting. 

She’s finally doing it. Yue’s _contributing_. 

The eclipse begins. Within seconds it’s dark out, the battlefield illuminated only by fires leftover from bending. The temperature plummets, sweat on Yue’s skin evaporating and leaving her chilled. 

The firebenders are shocked when nothing but smoke comes from their hands. Yue takes their surprise as a good sign. If the Fire Lord knew about the invasion, about the eclipse, surely he would have informed his soldiers? 

The enemy troops are pushed back. Yue is thrumming with adrenaline. She eases up on boosting the waterbenders, now that there’s no fire to watch out for, and gets to work taking out soldier after soldier with precise strikes. Yue goes for the throat almost every time - it’s less protected than the chest or the head but still a vital area - severs arteries that spray when sliced over and over. There’s blood on her Fire Nation clothes, on her skin, glistening in sharp contrast in her pure white hair. 

Fighting with weapons isn’t as glamorous as bending. Yue doesn’t have the benefit of killing prettily, with frostbite or drowning. The bodies she leaves behind are gruesome. 

This is her reward for forfeiting the sheltered life of a princess. Yue can’t say she has any regrets. In the heart of the battle, the apprehension she’d experienced earlier melts away like seasonal ice in the springtime. She’s fighting for her people, her friends, and if she needs to mow down hundreds to keep them safe, she will. It’s her duty as royalty to bear these burdens.

The sun begins to peak out from behind the moon. Has Aang done it?

Is the Fire Lord dead?

“Yue, you need to come with me.” Without warning, Han is pushing through lines of friends and foes alike, gripping her by the arm and pulling her along. 

She tries to break free, but his hand is like iron. “Han?! What are you doing over here, you’re supposed to be with the _Aqeutac!”_

“I have my _own_ mission, and it’s bringing you back where you belong.” Out of his pockets he pulls the engagement necklace, as if this is even close to a good time. 

Yue is _furious_. He abandoned the _Aqeutac_ for this?! His absence could be the difference between life and death for his fellow warriors! He’s throwing the entire organization of troops into disarray! 

He’s still talking. “-look where it’s gotten you! You’re not even a good _woman_ anymore, let alone a princess! You think anyone else will marry you now? Stop playing warrior and start behaving!” Even as he lectures her (lectures her!) he’s moving to tie the necklace around her neck. It’s too tight, and it leaves her skin raw where she struggles against it. Once he’s done he lets one hand drift down to squeeze her butt, laughing to himself. “Spirits, I missed your ass,” and Yue-

Yue _snaps_. 

She _kicks_ him in the gut, hard as she can, using his pain to twist her arm out of his hold. While he’s wheezing, Yue tears the necklace off her neck and throws it to the ground, stomping on it until she hears a satisfying crunch. 

(Figures it’s not even bone. Instead it’s some sort of dyed shell. He couldn’t be bothered to carve a high-quality necklace). 

“ _Stop_ touching _me!”_ Yue shouts, holding the sickle half of her kusarigama so that the tip rests on his throat. She watches his adam’s apple bob as he swallows. Standing there, blade poised to kill, splattered with the blood of fallen opponents, Yue is as far from Han’s ideals as she can go. 

“Yu- Princess Yue, you’re upset, why don’t you _put that down_ so we can talk about it?” 

The blade presses into his skin, just hard enough to puncture. Blood wells around the wound. “I’m done _talking_. I’m done putting up with the _groping_ , with the disgusting _comments_ , with you _bragging_ about all the perks you’ll gain by marrying me. You think I don’t _listen?_ You think I’m not aware of the things you _laugh about_ with your friends?” Dried blood crunches under her palms as she tightens her grip. “You know as well as I do that no matter what you do to me, everyone will take your side. So why shouldn’t I kill you right here, save myself the suffering?”

“Princess, what- what do you expect me to do? What do you want from me?” Han doesn’t see any of his actions as wrong. Even now, Yue is a hysterical woman, overreacting over nothing. He’ll never understand how _vile_ he is.

In one swift movement, Yue shifts both ends of her kusarigama to one hand, pulls the bone dagger from her belt, and drives it into his shoulder. “I want you to _beg_ ,” she hisses. “I want you to feel even a _fraction_ of what you made me feel, so get on your knees and _beg_ me not to _save myself the trouble.”_

Three things happen at once:

  1. Han pisses himself, drops to his knees, and begs Yue not to slice his throat open like the pelt off a polar-dog bear.
  2. Her father, who arrived at some point before Han peed all over himself, yells for her to _“stop, Tui and La, stop!”_
  3. Aang glides past, howling at the top of his lungs for everyone to _“run for the capsules,”_ that the invasion has failed. 



There’s just enough time for her father to meet Yue’s eyes, horrified and disappointed, and whisper, “what’s happened to you?”

Then Katara is running past, grabbing Yue’s hand, and Yue lets herself be pulled away from her father’s betrayed gaze. 

-

They don’t make it to the capsules. Everyone has barely reached the beach before war balloons take to the sky, bombing their only escape to rubble. Yue’s heart drops into her throat at the sound of metal screaming as it collapses on itself, melting onto the beach and turning sand to glass.

Hakoda grabs the smallest child by the armpits - the Duke - and chucks him onto Appa’s armored saddle. “Get the kids out of here!”

Sokka protests, tries to take responsibility, but Hakoda isn’t having it. “I’m proud of you,” Hakoda tells him, hand on Sokka’s shoulder. Sokka sobs. 

_What’s happened to you?_

The gang, plus the kids Yue doesn’t know well, climb into the saddle. No one is happy. Zuko is there, and Yue wants to be thrilled to see him. She’s too exhausted to do anything more than squeeze their hands together. The _Aquetuc_ members are filtering into the crowd. Her father is bandaging Han, worried for him. He doesn’t spare her a glance.

_What’s happened to you?_

“I love you,” Hakoda shouts to his children as Appa takes off. Yue pretends it’s her father watching them flee with nothing but pride in his eyes. 

_What’s happened to you?_

Once they’re out of sight, Yue buries her head in Zuko’s shoulder and passes out. 

———-

_“Little Moon? Would you like me to drown this man?”_

Yue sat with her head against her knees, curled up on a lone glacier drifting through an endless ocean. She wore her favorite parka from home, hair back in the traditional style and royal hair pins fastened in place. 

La bobbed at the surface of the water. They’d chosen a familiar setting for the meeting, hoping to put Yue at ease. 

“ _No,_ ” Yue sobbed. “I don’t want my father _dead_ , I want him home safe. I want him to still _love_ me. The way he looked at me La...”

Yue’d never let her father down before. She always did what he needed, never acted out or argued or asked for something inconvenient. What had she looked like to him, his once perfect daughter threatening to kill his best friend’s son, stabbing him, covered in blood and raving as if she had midnight sun madness?

_What’s happened to you_ , he’d cried, his beloved daughter a wild monster. 

Yue never thought she’d fail so spectacularly at meeting her father’s expectations. She craved her father’s approval her entire life; any sign she was doing right by him was a sign she was doing right by her people. Yue suppressed her desires, suppressed her personality, suppressed _everything_ for him. The moment she let those unsightly wants escape into the open she ruined the faith her father had in her.

The ocean frothed near La’s mouth when they spoke. _“Does he love you? Or the picture you presented him?”_ When Yue hesitated to answer, La continued. _“Think on this. I will ensure he makes the journey home.”_

Yue wakes up when Appa lands. Aang’s led them to an air temple. The buildings are upside down, built into the sheer face of a cliff, probably just so the Air Nomads could point at it and say, “see, I told you it was possible!” 

The walls and floors are coated with soot, dust, and ash. There are chains dangling from a few places in the cliff, as they’ve been for one hundred years. Underneath the disuse and remnants of genocide, murals and statues of people long gone watch as they unpack.

No one is up for conversation until the next day. Yue has faith that La will return her father to the North, but Sokka and Katara may never see their father again. Zuko’s father tried to _electrocute_ Aang, only failing because Zuko redirected the lightning. 

Iroh would be proud. 

Now that the eclipse advantage is gone, there’s nothing to stop the Fire Lord from using his full power. Aang needs to learn (actually learn, not waver and hesitate and distract each time Zuko confronts him) fire himself.

“So, firebending,” Katara is the first to try breaching the subject. Aang decides he needs to give a grand tour of the temple right now immediately. It takes hours. The tour is fascinating, rooms upon rooms of abandoned living space and sky bison stables and ceremonial furniture only Aang knows the history of.

Toph is next. “When are you gonna start firebending for real?” Her posture screams _prepared to restrain if necessary_ , as if Aang is a skittish ostrich-horse needing to be corralled. 

Aang jumps off the nearest ledge. 

“Aang! We need to get moving if you want to defeat my father!” Zuko stands at the edge of the temple, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting. Aang pretends not to hear, gliding around out of reach.

Yue finds Aang tucked away in one of the many empty rooms. She enters quietly, Xīng trailing behind her. “Can I ask? Why you don’t want to learn firebending?”

“Last time I tried - I mean, really tried - I burned Katara. If she hadn’t been able to heal herself, it would’ve been _bad_. I can’t risk hurting someone again.” 

Yue tries to draw from her recent experience, the agony she felt when her father saw her hurt Han, the way she withered at his reaction. It’s not the same; digging that knife into him was intentional. Still, the end result was similar. Yue wounded her father by destroying the illusion of a perfect daughter, by attacking the boy he already considered a son. “I understand how horrifying it must have felt. I also know that fire isn’t only pain.” 

Yue never hated or feared fire; living in the North didn’t give her that luxury, but meeting Iroh and Zuko showed her fire is more than a tool. “It keeps us alive in the cold, it makes meat safe to eat, and it lights the way in the dark. I think... you should talk to Zuko about this. He understands the dangers of fire better than most. If, after that, you truly can’t bring yourself to learn, then that’s your choice. We’ll all support you regardless. Just, give it one more chance?”

Aang traces circles in the ash with his fingers. “I’ll try,” he says, glancing at her from the corner of his eyes. Xīng nuzzles up to him. The room is quiet, contemplative, gray stone painted with blues and yellows illuminated by sunlight streaming through the windows. In the rays of light, dust floats through the air. 

No matter how much Yue focuses, there are no spirits. Did the genocide drive them away?

It’s lonely. 

Yue wonders how much worse it is for Aang.

-

Zuko and Yue spend time after dinner away from the others, sitting on a ledge and staring at the chasm below them. 

“I’ve been here before,” Zuko says. “Only a few weeks after I was banished.”

Yue leans against his side. The temple is cold in the evenings. “How does it feel to be back?” 

“I miss Uncle. He was with me last time. He kept trying to cheer me up. The- my scar was fresh, still, so he told me to rest constantly. I snapped at him. I wish I hadn’t.” Zuko’s father is not a kind man. Yue abruptly realizes he’s worse than she’s previously believed. The dawning understanding fills her gut with cold rage, far beyond what Han stirs in her. Even Yue’s father’s disapproval (no matter if he stood in front of her and demanded she stop at once or he’ll never love her again) would be powerless to stop her from ending the Fire Lord if given the chance. 

Xīng leans against Zuko’s stomach until his hands stop shaking. Yue slumps against him harder, wanting to chase away what’s haunting him. Craving the ability to protect him, to end the phantom pain.

“I’m sure he understood why you were angry. When we find him again you can apologize, although I doubt Iroh expects an apology. He loves you more than anything. Not even spirits can change that.”

_What’s happened to you._ Yue can’t say that about her own father. Not now. Only La is aware of what happened. Yue can’t bare the others finding out. Of course they’d be supportive, but explaining that she lost all control and attacked an ally in the middle of battle, in front of her father? Humiliating. Her duty as princess is all about control - she’s not allowed to discard it when convenient. And how would the gang view her, knowing she drove a knife into Han instead of bearing his behavior as a princess should? 

Yue needs the others to still think of her as a kind person. As a good princess.

Zuko won’t think less of her, though. Yue trusts him with every shard of her being, violent ones included. If Yue could tell him why she fled home, she can tell him this.

“I think I ruined my relationship with my father,” she blurts out. “Han found me during the invasion, and he- I attacked him. Father saw. Father thinks only the best of Han, and he- he was disgusted by me.” Telling Zuko is different than discussing it with La. The words are heavy on her tongue, more real. 

Father is _disgusted_ by her.

Zuko cradles her hand in his own, running a thumb over her knuckles. The act is a comfort. “Then he’s stupid.” Articulate as always.

Snorting, Yue lets herself relax against Zuko. He’s warm, safe, and Yue hasn’t felt this secure with someone since her mother passed. “I love you,” she huffs out, and she honestly doesn’t realize what she’s said, how true it is, until Zuko responds. 

“I- me too. I mean, I love you back, not that I also love me. In the romantic way, that is.” He’s rambling, cheeks hot. Actually his entire body is hot - Zuko’s body temperature spikes so high Yue has to peel herself off of him.

Emboldened and entertained by Zuko’s response (he’s so awkward sometimes. She finds it endearing), Yue asks, “can I kiss you?” 

Zuko doesn’t bother answering. His lips greet hers like old friends. Yue’s never kissed anyone before, so she doesn’t really know what she’s doing, but it’s still wonderful. Sweet and soft and slow, nothing but raw trust and complete adoration. Her hands reach up to cradle Zuko’s face, snaking fingers through his hair. Zuko’s arms meet behind her, resting against her back. 

They only break apart because Xīng starts squealing from between them, stuck sandwiched against both their torsos. 

“Sorry, Xīng,” Yue says. She’s slightly out of breath. 

Xīng nudges her knee before hopping off, probably to solicit snacks from Aang. The two of them watch Xīng scurry off. Yue shyly turns back to Zuko, biting her lip before losing composure and giggling up a storm. “That was nice,” she smiles. “It was my first kiss.”

“Mine too,” Zuko admits. “Honestly, when we met you were the first girl my age I’d talked to for three years.

Yue lifts a hand to her mouth. “Really? I never would’ve guessed.” She’s teasing him. She loves teasing him. She loves _him_.

Rolling his eyes, Zuko leans in to shut her up with another kiss. Yue laughs the entire time, even when it causes their teeth to knock together. Is this how it always feels? Letting someone touch you because you want them to? 

It’s magical.

Or it _was_ , until Zuko’s hand slips lower and she flinches so violently she bites her tongue. For a moment, Zuko’s hand wasn’t his. The sensation of fingers sliding across her butt is tightly interwoven with the myriad of negative experiences accompanying Han, and the second she recognized it Yue needed to _escape_.

“N- _wait_ ,” Yue gasps, untangling from Zuko. “I- it’s...” How is she supposed to explain without it sounding like she’s accusing Zuko of acting like Han? Without the implication she doesn’t enjoy his touch? Her breathing quickens, fingers brushing across the line of pale bruises from Han’s necklace. 

Zuko acts swiftly, moving out of reach. “It’s okay, it’s alright, I get it. It’s Han, right? What he did?” 

Nodding, Yue is ashamed to find tears forming. This isn’t how her first kiss is supposed to go. She’s ruining _everything_. 

“I couldn’t touch my scar for almost a year, even after it healed.” The admission startles her right out of her spiral. Yue doesn’t need to explain. Zuko already understands, and he keeps talking. “I get needing to go slow. I get knowing there’s no real danger and still being afraid. Spirits, I’ll understand if you never want me to touch you there again. I _get_ it.”

Torn between relief and anger towards Han for tainting yet another aspect of her life, Yue allows a few tears to fall before calming down. “Thank you,” she whispers. “I... didn’t realize that would happen.”

“I’m glad you stabbed him,” is how Zuko responds. 

The consequences were immeasurable, but if given the choice, Yue would drive that dagger into him again without a second thought. “Me too,” she admits. She shouldn’t be glad, she’s a Water Tribe princess and she should never stoop to violence, let alone revel in it, but Yue doesn’t care. 

Her home can take Han’s side all it wants. Yue is in the right, and nothing will convince her otherwise. How many others have gotten away with such predatory behavior? How many victims have been smothered into silence? If this can happen to a _princess_ , how often does the average citizen struggle with this? 

If Yue is allowed her title after the war, she’ll force her people to take a critical look at what they’ve nurtured in the dark. The North is her home; Yue loves it. She loves the ice and the ocean, the wildlife and the food, the thick parkas and soft mittens. She believes it can be better than what it is now: the sexism, the nepotism, the isolation. 

Yue won’t allow it to rot from the inside out any longer.


	5. Heart-to-Hearts (or: La yells at Arnook)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaa school starts back up tomorrow i won't be able to spend all my time working on this anymore   
> not that I haven't been VERY distracted by video games lol  
> basically this was zuko's life-changing field trips but Yue Style. Katara doesn't get one bc yue already spends lots of time w her. Also she doesn't go on a revenge journey, not bc I don't love that episode but bc she doesn't have the rage Zuko's season 2 betrayal left her with in canon
> 
> also for the first time in my life the italics weren't erased when I got ready to post this I could cry in joy

Zuko takes Aang on a field trip to ancient ruins, said to be where humans learned firebending for the first time. The goal is to convince Aang firebending is more than destruction by educating him on its history. 

Firebending forms are derived from  dragons . Aang mentions sky bison being the original air benders. Toph says she learned from badger moles, just like the first earthbenders. Yue wonders why only waterbenders learned from an inanimate object.

She sneaks Zuko a chaste kiss before they take off. 

“You two finally got together?!” Toph approaches as Appa flies away. Yue jumps, cheeks warming. She should’ve expected Toph to notice before Yue did herself. Toph sees  everything . 

“We did, last night. I hope we didn’t bother you.” Did Toph hear Yue’s disaster of a kiss? Did anyone else?  Spirits , what if they don’t approve? 

Toph waves a hand in the air, nearly smacking Xīng into a wall. She can’t see them, even when they’re on the ground. “Hey, relax. What you do with Sparky is none of my business.“

She’s so nonchalant about the whole thing. Yue vaguely remembers hearing Toph is from old money; she knows how quickly gossip can spread if allowed. Back home she would be in so much trouble, spending time alone with a boy while unengaged. Kissing him. Toph seems to understand why Yue’s so shy about her new relationship. 

Toph is a cool person. Not only does she have no issues giving Yue privacy, she radiates confidence and power. 

“What was your life like growing up?” This is a forward question. Too forward to be polite. Yue asks anyway; Toph is the opposite of her in so many ways. Yue wants to understand her. Still, she’s taken aback at her own rudeness and rushes to explain. “I heard you grew up in high society, but you’re so- so bold. I admire that.“

Toph raises an eyebrow. The sarcastic apprehension is palpable. “You wanna hear about my  childhood? Really?” 

Yue refrains from commenting that Toph is still a child. Instead she nods eagerly. 

“Eh, okay.”

-

Something is wrong with the ocean. 

Chief Arnook was captured after the failed invasion and thrown onto a boat, alone (he was beyond a high-profile prisoner, being the Chief who successfully defended his city against an invasion), and headed for a maximum security prison, when the ocean... intervened. It’s been days now, and the Fire Nation crew has given up fighting for control. The boat chugs through the water, almost as if it’s being pulled along an invisible thread, and Arnook can tell from the stars in his window that it’s bringing him home. 

This isn’t necessarily  wrong . Perhaps the great spirits have heard his prayers, or perhaps the boat strayed into a strange riptide. Either way, Arnook is nearing home and his captives are frustrated and confused. 

No, what’s wrong is that the ocean can only be described as  angry . Waves churn and froth with a furious intensity, towering high enough to blot out the sun. While never touching the boat or it’s path, water twists and writhes as if barely restraining it’s fury. This goes beyond an intense storm; this is raw and primal emotion displayed in each uncharacteristic whirlpool, each roiling shift, each thundering crash of water meeting water. 

All his life, Arnook has known the ocean as purely a neutral entity. It provides food, shelter, the means to defend oneself. At the same time, it drowns and crushes and cares not who it kills. Now though, Arnook holds no doubt that the ocean is enraged. 

He can’t help but worry for his men. They were loaded onto a separate boat. Arnook hopes the ocean spares them as it’s sparing him, Han especially. The wound on his shoulder was deep, enough to hit bone. Arnook can only imagine the pain he must be in, captive and wounded by his own fiancé. 

How could Yue  do such a thing? 

Locked away as he is, Arnook has plenty of time to ruminate on his daughter’s behavior. Yue was always the perfect daughter; councilmen joked she was the ideal woman. She rarely spoke unless spoken to, she was graceful, beautiful, never argued or complained, a practiced cook and a master at constructing and repairing clothes. Not only did she excel in feminine jobs, she also played her part as princess flawlessly. Yue’s tutors had only praise for her; she understood literature and the sciences well, politics came easy to her, and mathematics was as exhilarating as the flights she described in poems. 

Arnook never expected her to flourish the way she did in mathematics. It only cemented his idea that Tui gave him a daughter unlike any others. What other woman could claim to be so learned yet so respectable? She never demanded more than her station, she embraced her role as the weaker sex despite quite possibly being more intelligent than many of the men Arnook knew. 

She’s the perfect daughter. That’s what Arnook believed, until she vanished in the night without a word, only to appear beside the prince of a vile, poisonous nation. Yue fought on the front lines, ignoring her place. She killed, and raised her voice, and disarmed her own father. His lovely daughter, untouched like fresh snow, stained with ash and blood. 

The Fire Nation prince must’ve corrupted her, somehow, in some way. His Yue would never abandon her place at home to fight. She’d never disobey him.

Yue’s excuse was that she felt unsafe at home. How could that be? She’s princess of the North, she wants for nothing. She’s given allowances no other woman receives. She’s guarded at all times, and yet, she’s unsafe? 

Arnook was stumped the entire invasion, turning her words over and over in his head. Then he saw Yue assault Han, and a deadly picture began to reveal itself.

During the presentation of the plan, the avatar’s teachers all glared at Han and, to an extent, him, as if Yue was spreading rumors. Chief Hakoda’s son and the avatar’s earthbending teacher pushed Han around without a thought. When he reached Han and Yue on the battlefield, he heard her demand for him to beg for his life, saw her drive a dagger into his shoulder with rage in her eyes and blood in her hair. And before this, before she left home, Yue complained once or twice about Han visiting. 

Somehow, under his and his dear friend Haku’s noses, Yue grew to hate Han. The question was why? 

Han is a competent warrior, eager to learn and amiable to stranger and friend alike. He could be on the arrogant side, but he was a man fresh out of boyhood, yet to be tempered by experience. What reason could Yue find to despise him? 

Arnook has plenty of time to figure it out.

-

As it happens, Toph and Yue have a  lot in common. A lot. Controlling parents? Check. A life abundant in material wealth but lacking in genuine human connection? Check. Being considering weak and helpless by everyone? Check. 

Yue struggles to imagine anyone seeing Toph and assuming she’s weak. Her body language alone screams power. Her attitude is brimming with the kind of cocky confidence only gained by being one of the strongest people on the planet. She invented an  entirely new form of bending in less than a day, at age  twelve . While  kidnapped . 

It’s not an exaggeration to say she’s the best earthbender in the world. Maybe even ever. 

Somehow, despite such similar upbringings, Toph and Yue are complete opposites. Where Yue accepted her restrictions and operated within them, Toph crushed them to pieces and spit on the remains. Where Toph boldly declares her intentions, Yue is almost averse to speaking so directly. Yue avoids conflict whenever she’s capable, while Toph relishes (and excels) in it. Toph rejected her high society manners while Yue still abides by them. 

Each word out of Toph’s mouth has an equal chance to appall her or impress her. Or both. Regardless, when Toph finishes relating her backstory, Yue feels a new kinship with her. 

“Toph, you’re the coolest person I’ve ever met.”

The statement earns her a punch to the arm. “And don’t you forget it.”

After around a day and a half, Zuko and Aang return to the air temple. Apparently the two learned a traditional firebending form, which Sokka and Katara call a dance just to rile up Zuko. Aang is actually excited to firebend. He doesn’t shy away when short puffs of flames leave his hands. 

Yue cheers each time they run through the new form, partly because Zuko’s ears turn red and partly because she’s thrilled Aang’s past his reluctance. 

It’s less than a week before Zuko is gone again, this time with Sokka. The days between were filled with soft looks and sweet kisses. True to his word, Zuko never lets his hands slip lower than Yue’s upper back. Toph is the only one who knows they’re dating (?), aside from Xīng and Momo. 

(Momo walked in on Yue and Zuko in a particularly passionate moment, and stared dead-eyed from the doorway until they noticed. He was rather judgmental about it, for a lemur).

Yue is torn between obsessing over the future of their relationship and refusing to think on what could be. They’re both future leaders (although Yue’s right to chiefdom is questionable at the moment). Any sort of behavior between them that’s not strictly political could be construed as manipulation or a conspiracy. The council of the North would no doubt view Yue’s love for Zuko as a weakness; any deal between the Fire Nation and the North, however fair or mutually beneficial, would look as if Zuko is pulling the strings. On the other hand, any attempt at reparations from the Fire Nation would be met with accusations that he’s only doing so for Yue, or that the North is controlling him. 

The only solution Yue can see is one of them abdicating their position, but if given the chance Yue would seize chiefdom in a heartbeat. How else can she improve her tribe? Zuko won’t give up his throne, either. His people need leadership that isn’t corrupted with bloodlust, and even if Iroh takes the throne (although Yue doubts it - he’s old and has a list of crimes against the Earth Kingdom, while Zuko is a complete unknown) Zuko would never leave his nation. His sense of duty is far too strong, as is hers.

How are they supposed to make this last, if both their countries would object? 

Putting up her hair, Yue notices how long the back has gotten. She’d kept it shaved close to her scalp, but lately upkeep hasn’t seemed to matter. Short curls of ivory reach the nape of her neck, poking out from behind her ears. 

Yue decides to let it grow. Maybe it’ll look nice. Her mother had long hair. Yue has a vivid memory of her mother’s hair from behind, flowing in the polar wind. She remembers it looking regal, beautiful and dignified. 

It’s one of the few things she recalls about her.

“Hey Yue?” Aang approaches from a courtyard further back. “Could you, um, help me with something...?” He’s oddly hesitant. 

“What’s wrong?” Xīng pokes their head out from Yue’s sleeping bag, only waking up for the possible drama. 

“So... Teo and the Duke were exploring some of the inner hallways, and they said they saw something. Like a spirit, maybe. And it seemed really angry, so I was wondering if you and Xīng could help me investigate?”

A spirit? Yue hasn’t seen any spirits since they arrived, but she didn’t venture very deep into the temple. “Alright,” she says. “Lead the way.” 

The air chills the deeper into the cliff Aang leads her. The further the two retreat from the sun, the more haunting the atmosphere grows. Yue’s walking through the site of a massacre, searching dimly-lit stone tunnels for a possibly malevolent spirit. 

Xīng curls around Yue’s neck like a scarf. Their faint glow is a reassurance as the passage grows darker. “Do you sense anything?” 

Biting his lip, Aang shakes his head. 

The sound of a door slamming echoes through the halls. Aang and Yue both jump. 

“What was that?”

“I dunno. It came from up ahead.” 

A wooden door, soft with rot, swings on rusted hinges. Beyond it is an empty room, with a staircase cutting through the floor. 

“This must be a storage room,” Aang creeps past the door. “We put food and hay in cellars to keep them from rotting.”

Xīng whines. Yue’s skin crawls, shoulders itching as if someone is staring from behind her. “Are you sure we should keep going?” 

Aang is halfway down the stairs. “Maybe there’s still stuff down here,” he shouts, giddy with excitement. Yue’s not sure what kind of stuff would last 100 years, even sheltered underground. She follows anyway. 

The cellar is cold, at least for the light clothes Yue’s wearing. Aang illuminates their surroundings with a handful of fire. The walls are lined with uniform holes chiseled into the rock, likely shelves. Ash swirls across the floor as they walk. Beyond Aang’s flames, the darkness stretches on, thick and unyielding. 

Despite the emptiness, Yue knows they’re being watched. There’s rage and grief, unspeakable agony, pressing against her. Xīng shudders the further they stray from the stairs. 

“Can you feel that?” Yue asks, not risking a glance towards Aang. Her eyes are fixed on the darkness in front of them. The longer she stares, the more it seems to be  moving , coiling and shifting like a rat-viper. 

Aang doesn’t get to respond. Something bursts in the dark, sending bits of old wood skittering towards them with a blast of stale air. 

“ How dare you bring your cursed flames down here!”

The voice sends vibrations through Yue’s bones, making her teeth ache and her lungs stutter. Xīng squeals in terror, pressing against Yue’s chest. She wraps her arms around them. 

“Are you a spirit?” Aang calls. He’s remarkably unphased by the suffocating sense of hatred. 

A figure peels from the dark. They’re some sort of lion, with gleaming silver and emerald fur grown in swirling patterns and thick claws cracking the ground where their feet flex. They’re snarling, and their teeth are impossibly long, longer than Xīng. 

“I am a Gangs Seng Ge, a great King of Beasts, killer of Fire vermin like you!” The lion-spirit lunges towards Aang, wind whipping through the tight cellar. 

“Wait, you’re-“ Aang yelps and backflips away, stuck hopping and bouncing up each time his toes touch the ground. The lion-spirit snaps at his feet, furious. 

Furious and so, so sad. 

“Wait, stop! Stop, both of you! Aang, put out your fire!”

“But then we won’t be able to see-“

“Trust me!” 

Aang jerks his hands downwards. The fire disperses, and the dark swallows them whole, save for the dim blue glow of Xīng.

The glow is what allows Yue to watch the lion-spirit’s face loom towards her, still snarling. They come close enough for their breath to ghost across Yue’s face, her bangs shifting with each exhale. “ You reek of Tui. What is a child of the moon doing with fire?” 

Yue swallows. “He’s not from the Fire Nation. What is a king of beasts doing in an abandoned cellar?” 

The lion-spirit roars, swiping a paw towards her, stopping just before their claws touch skin. Yue flinches. “ There is nowhere for me to go, no purpose to my existence! They slaughtered my children! They burned them alive!”

“You mean the Air Nomads, don’t you.” Aang approaches Yue’s side, visible in Xīng’s light. 

The lion-roars roars again, enraged, anguished. “ You have no right to speak of them!” They lunges towards Aang, mouth stretching wide to bite. 

Aang stops them with a barrier of wind. Yue squeezes Xīng tighter as more powerful gusts tear through the cellar. “I do have a right, because I  am an Air Nomad. The last Air Nomad.” 

Slumping to the ground, the lion-spirit keens. “ You... but it’s been so long... you bent fire...” 

“I’m the avatar. I was frozen for 100 years, but the avatar state kept me alive.” Aang knelt on the floor, releasing the wind wall between them. He put a hand on the lion’s face. “The monks told me about spirits like you - you’re a Snow Lion, aren’t you?”

The lion-spirit keens and nods, nuzzling into his touch.

“I thought Snow Lions were the embodiment of joy. That your feet never touched the ground! What happened?!” 

“ They killed you... they killed all of you... I flew to every temple, but you were all dead! You were my children who I loved! How could I be joyful when there was no one to be joyful for!?”

Aang presses his face against the Snow Lion’s. “I’m here now,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I left. I’m  so sorry.” 

The last airbender and a mourning spirit, united in their grief. 

Yue sits against a wall, silent. She’d leave to give them privacy, but Xīng is Aang’s only light source. Instead she looks away as they cry over their lost family and wishes with all her heart that things were different.

-

The Snow Lion leaves the temple afterwards. Yue informs Teo and the Duke that the situation has been resolved. 

-

Sokka and Zuko return from their “fishing trip” in the most massive, ornate war balloon Yue has ever seen. Along with the new ride, the two somehow found Chief Hakoda, a firebender Yue didn’t know, and a Kyoshi Warrior Yue didn’t know. 

“I’m Suki,” the Kyoshi Warrior says, shaking her hand. She’s got a strong grip, and her arms are so muscular. Yue is thrilled to meet another nonbender, especially one that held their own against Azula. 

And is a girl, too. 

“Yue.” Shaking Suki’s hand, Yue smiles. “Would you mind sparring with me later?”

“Sure. You a waterbender?” 

“Nonbender.”

Judging from the appraising look in Suki’s eyes, she’s just as interested as Yue. “Looking forward to it.”

That evening, Chief Hakoda takes Sokka and Katara fishing for dinner, while Zuko and Yue cook up some rice and bamboo shoots to go with it. While washing the rice, Yue asks Zuko where he went. 

“Broke into a prison,” Zuko answers, shrugging. “Caused a riot. Found Sokka’s dad and girlfriend. Broke out.”

Yue snorts. Zuko has a knack for breaking and entering. She smiles at him. “I’m glad you’re safe.” 

Unfortunately he doesn’t stay safe. Azula comes calling, in her own war balloon, and bombs the temple. Chief Hakoda, the new firebender (his name is Chit Sang), and the kids from the invasion flee one way while the gang piles onto Appa and takes off. Zuko spends a horrifying moment freefalling after fighting Azula on the balloon before Appa catches him. 

Yue hugs him with an iron grip afterwards, trembling. “Don’t do that again, please.”

They make camp on an uninhabited island, lush and green. Everyone seems to be in a good mood, save for Sokka, who retires to his tent early. 

Yue admires Sokka. He’s clever, he’s practical, he’s a good person, he isn’t afraid to make hard choices to protect his friends. He’s the epitome of the ideal Water Tribe Warrior. Sokka is also a dork, in an endearing way, and he’s fun to talk theory with. He’s the only one who finds the mathematics of fluid dynamics as engaging as Yue does.

(Even Xīng gets bored and wanders away after an hour of Yue’s thoughts on the topic).

Seeing him withdrawn worries her. After dinner, Yue approaches his tent, hoping to help in some way. “Sokka? May I come in?”

There’s some frantic rustling before Sokka answers back. “Sure, yeah.”

The inside of his tent is spartan, save for the rose Yue pretends not to see tucked under his pillow. “I wanted to ask if you’re okay? You’ve seemed quiet ever since we landed.”

Sokka’s eyes flit from her, to the ground, to her, and to the ground again. “It’s just- did- when the invasion happened, did your dad say anything? About me?” 

“No, why?” 

“The invasion wasn’t the first time I was in charge of something big. When we visited the North, and Zhao attacked, Chief Arnook put me in charge of an attack squad. I was excited, you know? I was too young to fight with my dad, and I always wished I could’ve gone with him, so fighting with other guys sounded like everything I ever wanted.” Sokka huffs out a humorless laugh. “There were so many ships, so many Fire Nation soldiers. My squad was  destroyed . I finally got to fight, to be a real warrior, and everyone under my command died. I couldn’t protect them. I couldn’t protect  anyone .”

“Sokka-“

“The invasion was supposed to be my redemption, but that fell apart just like my squad. I got my dad thrown in prison! Azula only found us because  I sprung him! I keep  messing up and everyone around me pays for it.”

Yue throws her arms around him, burying her forehead in his shoulder. “None of that was your fault. None. Believe me when I tell you I would follow your orders to the end of the world. All of us would. We trust you.”

“I guess I can try.” 

Leaning back, Yue nods solemnly. “I have complete faith in you.” There’s a shuffling noise outside. Sokka shoots a panicked glance towards his tent flaps. Casually sliding her eyes over to where the rose is hidden, she winks. “I’ll give you and Suki your privacy.”

Her hands cover her grin as she leaves the tent, Sokka’s sputtering behind her. 

-

Arnook snapped his eyes open. He was standing on a dark stone that spiraled out of the ocean like the arm of an octopus-squid. The surface was unnaturally smooth for stone, edges sharp enough to draw blood when he pressed his hand against one. There were no stars in the sky, nor the moon, just an uninviting void. The water sat perfectly still, so still he wondered if it was really the ocean. 

He was content to sit in silence, before the voice pulsed through his very core.

“ ARNOOK, FATHER OF THE MOON, ANSWER TO YOUR CRIMES.”

The stone trembled under him, slowly sinking into the water without making a single ripple. “Who’s there?! Who am I speaking to?!”

The surface of the ocean surges upwards in front of him, froth so cold it stung spattering his face. Churning liquid condensed above Arnook, writhing and hissing as it took the shape of a koi. 

It was hideous, in the way only the most horrifying, unthinkable things are. Blood oozed from its mouth through layers of ragged teeth. Its eyes were wriggling masses of sea slugs, its scales shifting on their own. What should’ve been fins were skeletal approximations of human hands, constructed from bits and pieces of fish that flopped and struggled despite being chunks. Some had no head, others no skin, others still were just heads with mouths, opening and closing, cloudy eyes darting around in terror. It reeked of rotting sea life. 

“ YOU DO NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR GUARDIAN DEITY? THE ONE WHO GIVES YOU LIFE? I AM LA, SPIRIT OF THE OCEAN, AND YOU WOULD BE A MEANINGLESS HUMAN WERE YOU NOT LITTLE MOON’S FATHER.” 

Each word made Arnook’s ears ring and his heart hammer, painfully so. He bowed, terrified. “Great Spirit La, you grace me with your presence. What does a being as powerful as yourself want with me?”

The stone dropped into the ocean, so fast he couldn’t even gasp. Water surrounded him, pulled at him aggressively, pushed and pressured until Arnook thought he would die. 

La was all around him now. Arnook felt their rage. 

“ YOU HAVE ALLOWED HARM TO COME TO LITTLE MOON.”

La said Little Moon was his daughter. Were they referring to Yue? “I beg for forgiveness! I never would have allowed her to leave the North if I’d known!” Briny fluid flooded his mouth as he spoke, and he struggled not to gag. 

“ EVEN NOW YOU TURN YOUR EYES AWAY FROM THE REAL DANGER. YOU ARE AN IGNORANT CREATURE, AND YOU ALLOWED LITTLE MOON TO BE HURT.”

“What real danger?! Please, is Yue safe?!”

Images are forced into his mind. Arnook saw Yue, back home, serving Han a platter of food. She leaned over, and Han’s hand was suddenly on her breast, squeezing. 

Anger and humiliation flooded through Arnook. This must be the time Yue mentioned. He knew the matter was taken care of now, but that didn’t make seeing his dear daughter’s panic any easier. 

A new image. Han fondling her breast again. Yue telling Arnook. Arnook insisting it must be a mistake. Seeing Han’s behavior himself, Arnook can’t pretend it was anything but intentional. He winced at the pained look in past-Yue’s eyes.

A new image. Han slapping Yue’s butt as she walks past him. 

A new image. Han pulling her parka down for a peek. 

A new image. Han yanking Yue’s hand to his mouth, sucking on her fingers, staring her dead in the eye.

A new image, a new image, a new image. Arnook’s stomach churned at each scene, mouth painfully dry. Why had Yue never said...?

But why would she? When he didn’t believe her?

Arnook saw himself announcing Yue’s engagement. Saw Yue frantically start packing, saw her throw the necklace onto her bed like it was a curse. 

He watched Yue break down in front of the Dragon of the West, found himself agreeing with the invader prince’s rage, hating himself for never giving Yue the comfort and reassurance two  Fire Nation royals supplied her.

He should’ve been the one to protect Yue. Not the enemy.

Arnook was crying by the time La forced him to see the awful invasion. Han groping her in the middle of a battle, abandoning his comrades, Yue wailing (in a desperate, furious, loud voice he never knew she had) that no one will ever take her side. 

“ YOU DID THIS,” La said, condemnation in their voice. “ I WISH FOR LITTLE MOON TO BE HAPPY. MAKE HER HAPPY. FIX YOUR FAILURES, OR NO AMOUNT OF BEGGING FROM LITTLE MOON WILL SPARE YOU MY FULL WRATH.”

Arnook jerks awake in his cell on the Fire Nation boat. He immediately leans over the side of his cot and retches. His daughter, his beautiful daughter...

How could he fail her like this?

Arnook remembers the last thing he said to Yue. He was horrified by her behavior then, but now he feels nothing but regret. Does Yue know he still loves her?

Does Yue know he loves her at all, with what he’s allowed to happen?

How is he supposed to fix this?

-

Zuko has a beach house. 

As in, an entirely separate house that his family owns, just so they can visit the ocean whenever they want. The idea of owning multiple homes is baffling to Yue. What’s wrong with one? 

It’s an impressive house, though. Ornate red and gold decorations, dark, tile shingles, courtyards surrounded by hallways of dusty but expensive wood. In its prime, it must have been astonishing. 

Now, after years of disuse, it comes across as lonely. 

A picture of the royal family greets them when they open the doors. Zuko looks so  young in it, but Yue can still see the seriousness in his expression. Even then, he was determined to be a perfect prince.

He has his mother’s eyes.

Everyone is given their own room, but Yue spends her nights in Zuko’s. Nothing untoward happens; the two of them (plus Xīng) usually spend twenty minutes or so talking in bed before they fall asleep together. Yue cherishes each morning she wakes up snuggled against Zuko with Xīng curled between them. It feels like a family. 

Which only makes the thought of what’s to come, what their relationship will face, that much scarier. 

Yue chooses to focus on the current problem, Ozai, instead of future issues. Aang’s firebending training is into advanced sets now. Suki, Sokka, and Yue have been sparring at least once a day, keeping each other sharp. Yue’s also been practicing with her “moonbending” ability, as Toph officially named it. 

She learns it’s easier to do at night, and easier still the closer the moon is to full. There are limits to how much stronger Yue can make waterbending; once, she pushed so hard that Katara lost all control. Her bending lashed out at anyone and everyone, carving a smooth,  deep line into the cliff side only inches from Sokka’s head and transforming the sandy beach into a soupy slog of mud. 

Yue managed to fix Katara’s bending, only to immediately throw up and then pass out for sixteen hours.

She also can’t take bending away. No matter how much power she pulls from Katara, water still responds to her movements, and her bending always returns to normal within the day. 

Toph, being Toph, spends less of her time practicing and more time  specializing . Her mastery of earthbending is unchallenged, she’s literally peerless in metalbending, but apparently her sandbending isn’t up to her standards. The beach is crowded with intricate villages and creatures carved into sand, each with more detail than the last. 

There’s not much to do besides train for the final confrontation. That, and attend a play. 

Sokka comes back from a shopping date with Suki vibrating with excitement, holding a poster for a play about the avatar of all things. Sokka, Katara, and Aang are drawn in dramatic poses, while Zuko’s face looms in the background like a specter of doom. 

Yue’s never attended a theatre before. Both Water Tribes have a strong tradition of oral storytelling - there’s no efficient way to make paper, so most books and scrolls are strictly educational and imported from the Earth Kingdom. All of them are at least 80 years old as well, due to the North’s isolationism. Sure, she’s watched people tell stories, but not in a fancy building, dressed as the characters, reading off a script. 

Somehow they have enough money to get private balcony seats. It sucks for Toph, but it’s safer for everyone in the long run. Yue and Zuko sit next to one another, with Xīng sitting on Yue’s lap like a toddler. Zuko’s excited to be at the theatre, although he has plenty of criticisms on the theatre troupe. Yue is on the fence about taking a break to see a play.

For the first two minutes, that is. Then Sock Puppet Momo comes out and Yue laughs so hard she snorts. 

The first act only gets better. Zuko’s character is constantly yelling, which Yue delights in teasing Real Zuko about. Fake Appa and Sock Puppet Momo are hilarious; the way they move around all floppy with their blank eyes is the height of comedy. When the Blue Spirit makes an appearance to steal Aang from Zuko, Yue almost bursts a blood vessel at Zuko and Aang’s twin pained expressions. 

Of course, it’s easy to laugh at the parodies of her friends. It’s a bit harder when some stick-thin version of her with awful makeup makes an appearance and starts following Zuko and Iroh around like a stalker, with iconic lines such as:

“Prince Zuko~ I know you want me.”

“Oh, General Iroh, you’re so handsome~”

“Fire Nation royalty are so alluring. I just have to have one for myself!”

Fake Yue also constantly picks up common objects like chopsticks or katanas and says, “what is this? We don’t have these in the Tribes!” To which Fake Zuko and Fake Iroh must explain in an exasperated tone what she’s holding. 

Yue’s face is so hot from embarrassment her eyes start to water. Her arms start to tighten around Xīng. She’s not some  predatory creep after Zuko and Iroh’s power! And sure, she’s seen a lot of things for the first time since she left the North, but she’s not  stupid .

She can’t even  look at Zuko. She spends the intermission crouched on the wood floor of an outdoor balcony, face buried in her knees, while everyone else rants about how awful the play is. Not even Xīng’s confused beeps can snap her out of it.

The play reaches the fall of Ba Sing Se. Fake Azula implores her brother to come home, and Fake Zuko looks like he will, until Fake Yue shows up and  seduces him into treason. 

Yue has half a mind to spend the rest of the play asleep in the Spirit World with La. 

Blessedly, the play skips over the attempted invasion entirely. Yue can’t imagine how they’d portray her stabbing an ally. Not so blessedly, the play ends with both Zuko and Aang being  burned to the death. 

Shame forgotten, Yue grabs Zuko’s hand lightning fast when Fake Zuko is killed by Fake Azula, squeezing tight, but there’s no way it helps. What does it feel like, to watch your own people cheer for your death? It would  break Yue.

“You were right, Zuko,” Yue hums as everyone walks back to the beach house. The sand underfoot is cool and damp, and the air smells like smoke. No one is in a good mood. “The Ember Island Players are the  worst .” 


	6. Yue and the Amazing Invisible Avatar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> class hit me like a golf club to the teeth

Yue would kill Ozai if given the chance. There would be no hesitation, no following regret, not an ounce of remorse. For what he’s done to the world, to  Zuko, Yue believes he should die.

The thing is, it’s not her decision. It’s Aang’s. And Aang would rather chew off his own hand than intentionally take a life. Yue isn’t thrilled about it, but she understands where he’s coming from. 

It feels like she and Katara are the only ones who do. 

“-maybe I can use glue bending, and glue his arms and legs together so he can’t bend!” Aang’s anti-murder brainstorming session is growing more and more far fetched the longer he rambles. 

“Yeah, and then you can show him his baby pictures and all the happy memories will turn him good again,” Zuko says, all dry sarcasm and derision. 

“ Zuko,” Yue snaps. She knows this is hard for him, to see his father offered mercy he doesn’t deserve, but there’s no reason to take it out on Aang. 

Zuko snaps his mouth shut with an audible click, but it’s too late. Aang explodes, storming off into the house, Momo at his heels.

No one sleeps well that night. Operation: Defeat Ozai is about to start, moved before the comet at La’s urging. They’re about to overthrow the current leader of a nation, and their oldest member is seventeen. The one doing the overthrowing is  thirteen. And a pacifist. And a vegetarian. 

Spirits.

Can anyone really be surprised when he’s nowhere to be found the next morning? Panicking, yes. On the edge of a complete mental breakdown, sure. Shocked? Not at all. 

Zuko is elected Chief Aang Finder. His first order of business is to fly everyone to the Earth Kingdom and meet with a bounty hunter named June. June has a shirshu named Nyla that Xīng is terrified of, which Yue can’t help but find silly since Nyla can’t smell them. Everything seems to be looking up until June says Aang no longers exists.

No longer  exists . 

“What do we  do?” Yue asks, crushing Zuko’s hand in her own. All their hopes are riding on Aang being  physically present in this plane of existence . Ozai is a terrible man with a legion of soldiers and war balloons and metal ships and the avatar state is the single advantage they had. 

(Sans Toph. The avatar state and Toph. But Toph probably couldn’t defeat Ozai solo.

Probably). 

“I have another idea.” Zuko pulls something out of his bag. Yue doesn’t need to see it to recognize it; the smell is... unique. It’s Iroh’s sandal. “We need to find my uncle.”

June and Nyla lead the group deep into the Earth Kingdom, to a crumbled section of Ba Sing Se’s outer wall. It’s only been a few months since Azula claimed the city, and already the stunning construction Yue marveled at during her time as a refugee is falling into disrepair. No need to keep up the walls when the enemy is already inside. 

They set up camp in the rubble after June leaves. Katara shoots Yue a raised eyebrow and a smirk as Zuko tosses his bedroll into her tent. Yue flushes but chooses not to say anything. Staying in Zuko’s room back at Ember Island may have given away her relationship status to the more perceptive members of the gang. 

(As in, Katara and Suki). 

Yue wonders how she’ll sleep when this is all over. She’s gotten used to Zuko’s presence, his warmth and his safety. What will she do when that’s no longer available? When they’re countries apart? Will she still have Xīng? Zuko loves them just as much as Yue does, would it be fair to Zuko to assume Xīng would stay with her? 

She nods off quickly, despite her anxieties. She’s exhausted, and the comforting powers of Zuko combined with Xīng are just too strong. 

Not strong enough to keep Yue from startling awake ( coming coming soon him ) a second before Toph shouts about incoming people, though. Yue expects Fire Nation soldiers to fight. 

She does not expect  Pakku . 

(Not Pakku the ostrich-horse. Human Pakku).

“Pakku!” Katara cheers. 

“Princess Yue?!” Pakku sputters out, one arm absently hugging Katara. “This is where you’ve been?! Your father thought you were kidnapped!” 

“...Pakku?” Zuko sideeyes Yue. “You named the ostrich-horse after this guy?”

“An  ostrich-horse?!”

Yue bows. “Hello, Master Pakku. As you can see, I’m well.” Pakku used to infuriate her; his disregard for her abilities, his refusal to acknowledge her authority, his rude attitude. Knowing Katara knocked him down a peg or three is the only thing preventing her from going on the defensive. 

Pakku isn’t alone. Sokka’s sword master, Piandao, is present, along with a slouching old man and another elderly man with puffy white hair. 

“Bumi?!” Sokka crows. Yue realizes the slouching man is King Bumi of Omashu. She also notices that everyone is wearing a uniform; blue robes with white pieces decorated with lotus flowers. 

Wait. 

“Are you all part of the White Lotus?” 

“You know of the White Lotus?” The disbelief in Pakku’s voice is uncalled for. 

“Iroh did mention inducting a young woman with white hair,” the man with puffy hair, introduced as Jeong Jeong, hums. Yue tenses, hoping Zuko isn’t upset over being left out.

Zuko breezes right past Jeong Jeong’s comment. “You spoke to my uncle? Is he alright? Is he nearby?” 

Resting a calloused hand on Zuko’s shoulder, Piandao smiles. “We’ll take you to him.”

-

The Fire Nation crew is taken into custody the moment a waterbender patrol finds the ship. The Northern Water Tribe breathes a collective sigh of relief when Arnook steps into the city, unharmed. His leaving with the  Aqeutac was a major point of contension. With Yue gone, if he died, there would be no one to fill his role. He’d insisted, though, that Yue needed him. 

“Arnook!” Haku greets the chief as he returns to his home. He looks haggard and pale, eyes rimmed red, but that’s to be expected after being held hostage by Fire Nation monsters. “I’m so glad you’re safe!”

The hug is weak, but Haku disregards that until Arnook speaks. “Haku... we need to talk about Han. Now.”

Dread pools in Haku’s gut. “Oh, spirits... is he- did they kill him?”

“No,” Arnook says. Chills race up Haku’s spine at the tone. His oldest friend sounds disappointed -  disgusted \- telling him his only son hasn’t perished at the hands of the enemy. He has no idea how to respond. Luckily he doesn’t need to. Arnook keeps speaking. 

“Did Han ever talk to you about Yue?” 

Where is this going? Arnook returns from a failed invasion and he wants to hear about Han’s old gossip about Yue? “Of course he did, they’re practically married already.”

Arnook’s first clenches and unclenches. “What. Did he say.” 

“Normal things! What is this about, Arnook?” 

The conversation moves indoors. “I was blessed with a vision from the great spirit La. In it, La showed me... he showed me truly disturbing things. Han, your  son-“ his voice broke. “Groping my daughter  over and over. Torturing her. It was disgusting, and La refused to allow Tui’s chosen To suffer such behavior any longer.”

Haku is frozen in place. His muscles are tense, so much so that it’s painful. This is worse than hearing his son was killed in battle. Han has angered a patron spirit,  enraged La to the point of divine intervention.  Worse, he did this by tormenting his oldest friend’s daughter. How long has this been going on right under his nose?

Little things, things that seemed insignificant at the time, float to the surface of his memory like dead fish, accusatory and foreboding. Han chuckling to his friends as Yue walked by with a mean glint in his gaze. Yue’s panicked face when he and Han arrived at Arnook’s home. The way other girls his age avoided him at all costs (he’d thought it was because they knew Han was destined to marry Yue, but now...). 

Most of all, the constant, infuriating disrespect towards his mother, the love of Haku’s life. Berating her over silly things, treating her contributions as if they were useless or easy. Haku thought it was a family thing, a problem between Han and his mother, not a problem between Han and women in general. 

And for Yue, sweet, intelligent, graceful Yue, the girl Haku loves like his own daughter, to be the victim in this... 

Haku sobs. Once, twice, three times, ugly and loud. “Arnook, spirits Arnook I’m-  spirits. How could I let this happen, I’m so sorry Arnook,  I’m so sorry!”

“I don’t blame you, Haku. You’d never let this happen on purpose. I just. I don’t know what to do.”

Haku buries his face in his hands. “Neither do I.”

-

The White Lotus encampment is very color coordinated. Blue and white tents, just like the blue and white robes. It’s almost like she’s back in the Water Tribes. 

“Grand Lotus Iroh is in that tent,” Piandao points to the largest tent in the center of the camp. Yue and Zuko exchange thrilled glances. 

“Thank the spirits,” Yue breathes. She’d insisted he could take care of himself, but internally she’d been terrified for him. His brother is insane. His niece is insane. His country is governed by the most radical of radical loyalists. “Let’s see him!”

Xīng beeps in assent.

She, Zuko, and Xīng rush to his tent, scrambling through the flap in a mass of limbs and eager faces. A cry of joy is on the tip of her tongue, but at the last second she bites it down. 

Iroh is asleep, snoring away. 

“Figures,” Zuko sighs, although he’s smiling in a fond way that softens his eyes and makes Yue’s heart flutter. 

“I guess we should wait?” It is the middle of the night after all. 

“I guess.”

The two find sit down near the entrance, Xīng spread across both their laps. Yue leans against Zuko’s side, and the next thing she knows there’s sunlight streaming in under the tent flap. Her neck is cramped and her legs are numb from the awkward position. Zuko’s head is limp on her own, her hair stuck to his cheek. Xīng‘s head is on Zuko’s thigh, but sometime during the night their legs rolled from Yue’s lap to the floor, leaving their body stuck in an L shape.

“Good morning,” an achingly familiar voice calls. Iroh is awake on his bedroll, his face wearing that serene smile she missed so much. 

Beside her, Zuko jerks awake. “Uncle!”

All at once, the three of them are hugging each other, crying and trembling in relief. Zuko’s hands tangle in Iroh’s robes, while Yue wraps her arms as far around Iroh as she can, squeezing like he could vanish at any moment. Iroh rests one hand on each of their backs, while Xīng worms into the center of the pile for maximum contact. 

They’re finally together again. 

Iroh shepherds them out for breakfast once everyone is all cried out. Toph cheers when they emerge. Over bowls of rice and egg, the group plans their next move. 

“Miss Yue, I have a gift for you. Will you fight with us?” Iroh hands over her own White Lotus robe. The material is soft and sleek, and the lotus decals sit heavy on her shoulders. She’s glad to have something new to wear after months of the same stolen outfit, but can she really consider herself equal to the bending masters she shares membership with? It almost seems dirty to wear the same clothes as them, to establish herself as just as capable.

“Of course.”

“Wait, Yue’s part of your club? But she’s not old!” 

“Thank you, Sokka.”

Zuko attempts to convince Iroh to defeat Ozai, but Iroh refuses. Yue understands where he’s coming from; without the Avatar’s intervention, even if Iroh were to end the war, it would seem as though the Fire Nation avoided justice. 

This leaves the “where in the world is Aang and who will beat up Ozai” problem unsolved. The comet will arrive within hours, the plan can’t be delayed, and the most important person in the group is missing. 

As is Momo. 

“We just have to move forward as if we know Aang is coming back,” Sokka says. Yue agrees, despite the way her head is full of terrible scenarios where Aang never shows back up and they all die pointless deaths. 

Her panic must be visible, because Xīng presses against her side and Zuko grabs her hand. “We can do this,” Zuko tells her. In the depths of her mind, Yue feels ( encouragement pride satisfaction ).

“Right.”

Sokka, Toph, and Suki head off to cripple the Fire Nation army’s forces. Zuko pairs up with Katara to take on his sister. Yue kisses him before he leaves, relishing the way his face reddens when Iroh whoops in the background. 

All too soon, it’s only her and Xīng remaining at the camp, gearing up to liberate Ba Sing Se. Iroh claps a hand on her shoulder. “Are you prepared for this?”

Yue purses her lips, running a finger across the seams of her robe. Her kusarigama rests in one hand, both comforting and depressing in its familiarity. Ba Sing Se. Where she’d truly considered staying the rest of her life in that homey apartment with Zuko and Iroh. 

“Yes.”

-

“So, Zuko and Yue, huh? I wonder how long that’s been going on.” 

“Are you serious, Sokka?”

“Suki, what do you see in him.”

“What?!  What?!”

-

The first time Yue entered Ba Sing Se, she’d been overflowing with nervous hope. Ba Sing Se was a haven, the end of a long journey, a place to finally rest. Now, as the White Lotus gathered at the outer wall, Sozin’s comet scorching the sky, Yue felt nothing but dread. 

Is Pao safe? What about Jin? Are Smellerbee and Longshot still in Ba Sing Se? Even the lady who screamed about getting the wrong tea and stormed out out Pao’s shop - is she alright? Are they alive? Suffering? Terrified? Furious? A spike of guilt pierces her heart. She was lucky enough to escape, but everyone else...

The battle plan is discussed. While Iroh and Jeong Jeong are strengthened by the comet, Pakku will be powered up by Yue. She’ll stick close to him, striking anyone his bending spares. 

Yue is going to be fighting alongside an esteemed member of her father’s council. 

She’s going to be breaking her tribe’s traditions in front of him. Fighting in front of him, one of the staunchest opposition of women anywhere but the home. Every mistake she makes will be picked apart as evidence against her. Her father, the man who loved her most, hates what she’s become. What will Pakku think of her? The princess who abandoned her people, her safe haven, to become everything a proper Water Tribe woman isn’t?

“Don’t hold me back,” is all Pakku tells her. How infuriating is that - she could cripple his bending in an instant. She’s acting as his own personal comet, and that’s how he treats her? 

Xīng clicks their teeth at him, aggressive, and Yue realizes that on the eve of a battle in the Earth Kingdom, far from home, there’s no reason to accept this. “Do  not speak to me so disrespectfully. I am using  Tui’s power to bless you, so respond with the dignity such a gift deserves!”

Pakku raises an appraising brow, looking her over. He doesn’t respond, but he does hum thoughtfully before turning away from her. That’s as close to an apology as Yue will get, so she takes it and moves on. 

Iroh launches the first shot. His fire sparks and shudders and hisses, the raw power of it demanding to be released. The heat stings her skin despite her distance behind him, and the scream the fire makes as it obliterates a portion of the inner wall leaves her breathless. 

It’s clear the soldiers inside weren’t expecting an attack, with the way they flounder and scramble to battle. Pakku and Yue split from the rest of the group, darting through alleyways to strike further into the heart of the city. Pakku wields his bending flawlessly, freezing or impaling or drowning with a flick of the wrist. Yue darts behind him, slitting the throats of soldiers that managed to dodge Pakku’s attacks.

Once again, blood stains her clothes and hair. The white lotus on her robes looks less reassuring with every swing of her sickle. 

She’s breathless with adrenaline, but she can’t afford to flag. Not with Pakku watching. He’s one of the most respected members of her tribe, and his backing will be invaluable when she tries for a societal reform.

She won’t waver. No more “if father allows her back.” Yue _will_ make her voice heard. If she can travel with the avatar, invade the Fire Nation capital, and liberate Ba Sing Se, she can stand her ground against injustice back home.

The fighting dies down. A spray of ice dusts the street. Pakku has a frigid smirk on his face, and the last straggling streams of soldiers have been defeated. Yue can hear Bumi punting tanks around for fun in the distance. The sun is starting to set, and the comet’s light paints the rising moon a burnt orange. The sight is comforting, like meeting a friend after too long apart.

Ba Sing Se is free.


	7. Returning Home (or: Yue cries a lot)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the finish line, folks. thanks for tagging along <3

“Explain to me exactly  what was going through your head when you  goaded Azula into electrocuting you.”

Zuko buries his face in his hands. “I can’t make my own lightning so I needed to use hers.”

“Yeah, great idea Zuko,” Katara gripes, fastening bandages around his chest. “Tell your unstable sister to use her most powerful technique in your stupid Fire Nation duel. I sure can’t see that ending badly.” 

“Neither can I.” Iroh slurps his tea loudly. Very loudly. He keeps his eyes locked on Zuko the entire time. 

Yue leans against Zuko’s shoulder, careful not to put too much weight on him. She sighs. “We’re all glad you’re okay.”

Yesterday Aang confiscated Ozai’s bending. As in, straight up removed Ozai’s ability to fire bend. He turned a bender. Into a non bender. Ozai is now in prison, where he’ll remain for the rest of his life. Azula was institutionalized after losing an Agni Kai against Zuko. Yue felt for her; a fourteen-year-old who based her entire identity on being better than her peers, who grew up the “favorite child” of a horrible dictator, who lost everything. She can’t imagine how hard it is for Zuko.

Zuko is the Fire Lord now, although Yue and Iroh successfully guilted him into resting until his official coronation. Iroh sent out letters to as many dignitaries he could: Chief Hakoda to represent the Southern Water Tribe, several Earth Kingdom officials (including King Kuei, although Yue has no idea how he found an address for him), and, uncomfortably, Chief Arnook to represent the North. Everyone will be arriving over the course of three days, and then Zuko will be publicly crowned. Trials for war crimes and discussions of reparation will start the day after. 

The gang is staying at the royal Fire Nation palace. If someone told Yue even two years ago that she’d be lounging around the capital of the Fire Nation, doting on the Fire Lord, and being referred to as a war hero, Yue would assume they had midnight sun madness. And yet, here she was. 

Now that the war is over, there’s nothing to stop Yue from agonizing over her future with Zuko. Or her reunion with her father. Or Zuko’s safety as the leader of the world’s most hated country. 

“Fire flakes?” Zuko asks, holding up a shallow bowl. The palace cooks’ fire flakes were adjusted for “foreign tastes,” but they still left her eyes watering. 

“Don’t mind if I do,” Sokka grabs a handful, elbow almost knocking into Yue’s face, then wipes his hand on Zuko’s silk bedsheets before snatching another handful.  “Mmmmm.”

“ You -“

The door to Zuko’s room - which, by the way, was three times larger than the upper ring apartment they’d lived in - slides open with a click. Pakku strolls into Zuko’s bedroom, eyeing Toph’s bare feat and spread-eagle position on Zuko’s incredibly expensive bed with plain disgust. “Princess,” he starts. “I’ve retrieved proper clothing for someone of your station.” In his arms sat a bundle of white and pale lavender fabric. 

“Water Tribe clothing?!” 

“Master Pakku, where did you find that?” 

“I utilized those infernal hawks to retrieve the fabric and supervised one of the seamstresses.” 

That poor seamstress. 

Yue puts it on in Zuko’s closet. It’s made from linen, not furs, but if Yue tried to wear fur in the Fire Nation she’d melt faster than an ice cube in an armpit. The style is accurate down to the smallest seam, white lining and purple dye, with dark blue ruffles peaking out at the bottom. Pakku even included some plain blue hairpins. She hasn’t had those for a while. With the pins, her hair being up in the traditional style, and the clothing, it’s almost like she’s home. 

Although the bottom half of her hair reaches her shoulders, now. That’s new. Yue wonders how long she needs to grow it to reach her waist, the way her mother wore it. 

“Thank you, Master Pakku,” Yue says the second she leaves the closet. “This is lovely.” Pakku gets that self-satisfied smirk that used to make her want to dunk his head in a tiger-seal hole. Yue skillfully ignores it. 

Later that day, Zuko takes her on a tour of the palace, just the two of them. He walks slowly, needs plenty of breaks, and he can’t bend over without hissing through his teeth, but he’s so eager to show her his home that Yue can’t say no.

“This is where mom and I fed turtle-ducks.”

“This is where Azula pushed me off the roof.”

“This is where father set my favorite book on fire.”

Of course, half his comments have her struggling not to break into Ozai’s cell and finish the job. 

The architecture is vastly different from Yue’s home, just like the weather, and Yue marvels at how different their respective palaces are. The Chief’s home in the North is made from packed, frozen snow scaled with whale bones for sturdiness, furs piled high to keep the warmth in, windows made from ice and strings of drying meat. Spirits darting through the corners of her vision wherever she goes. Essentially the same as any other home, only larger and located at the very end of the city. The royal Fire Nation palace is in the dead center of the capital city, and it’s all about  space. Hallways stretching on and on, empty save for banners or pillars. Bedrooms with only beds and desks, nothing else. A stark absence of spirits - there are some rooms Xīng refuses to enter, and Yue tries not to imagine why. Food prepared out of sight, windows left open to let in a breeze, the building itself sprawling across acres of land. 

It’s all so different, and yet Zuko and Yue turned out so similar. It’s almost like fate. Flooded with a sudden gratefulness, Yue quietly thanks Tui and La for crossing their path. 

-

Chief Arnook arrives a day before the coronation. Yue struggles to decide between hiding away in Zuko’s bedroom like an ashamed daughter or facing him head-on like the future chief she’s aiming to be. 

In the end, she doesn’t get a choice.

“Yue!” Her father cries, startling both her and Zuko. Yue freezes, turtle-duck food between her fingers. Hungry turtle-ducklings quack impatiently at the edge of the pond, while Zuko makes to hold her other hand, solid and reassuring. 

Pakku is next to Arnook, looking at Yue with a pointed gaze. He must have led him there, the traitor.

Panic ices her blood. She didn’t want to hear him say it, say that he’s disowning her or how disgusted he is with her-

( Calm listen reassurance ).

“Yue, the Great Ocean Spirit told me everything- who Han really is, what he did to you, how I’ve failed as your father.” Her father is  weeping. “I’m so sorry, Yue, I’m  so sorry , I won’t ask you to come home, just know that I’m so, so  sorry. I should’ve listened to you, I should’ve protected you,  spirits Yue I’m so sorry!” 

In the back of her mind, Yue notices how supremely uncomfortable Pakku looks with the chief wailing next to him. She hopes this teaches him to mind his own business. Also, did Father say the ocean spirit told him?  La? Did  La lecture her  father?

There are servants watching from the windows. Zuko isn’t bothering to hide his stare. The turtle-ducks have turned to see the commotion, and even Xīng, from where they’re swimming in the pond, has stopped at this point to observe the Chief of the North, inconsolably aopologizing in the palace gardens. 

“I... need you to say it. Say I don’t have to marry Han. Say... say you believe me.” Yue’s own eyes are burning. One blink and the tears will overflow. 

“ I believe you! I  believe you! You’ll never have to see Han again, I won’t give you to him! He can’t touch you ever  again !” 

Yue steps forward, once, twice, then she’s running as fast as her legs can carry her. She slams into her father’s chest, and it’s familiar and warm and everything she missed. They’re both crying now, hugging one another like it’s been decades. Her father is still apologizing, chest buzzing against Yue’s head. 

It seems Yue’s worries about her father allowing her home were for naught. 

-

Hours before the coronation, Zuko introduces Yue to his childhood friends, Ty Lee and Mai. Their relationship is complicated, to say the least, spending so much time under Azula, but the two fought her at the last second back in the boiling rock.

For Zuko.

That’s all Yue needs to know. 

Mai, oddly enough, reminds her of Toph. A sheltered, controlled child with stifling parents and a desperate need for any sort of outlet, except where Toph is an earthquake, loud and devastating, Mai is as silent and deadly as poison gas.

She and Yue have lots in common. Yue thinks they’ll got along well. Mai possesses a sort of beautiful danger that Yue admires.

Ty Lee is pure opposite of Mai. Where Mai had too much attention, Tye Lee had too little. Where Mai retreated inward, Ty Lee searched outwards for any sort of validation. Ty Lee ditched her wealthy lifestyle for a traveling circus, Mai remained a poised aristocrat. 

And she can see Xīng right out of the gate. Yue is beyond impressed. Someone needs to introduce her to Aang; her level of spiritual connection is astonishing considering she grew up in a city utterly  devoid of spirits.

Mai and Ty Lee are close. They clearly love each other. Their dynamic reminds Yue of her and Zuko’s, complimentary yet similar, yin and yang. 

Yue’s glad Zuko introduced them, and even more grateful Zuko wasn’t entirely alone as a child.

-

Zuko’s coronation goes smoothly. He looks so much  older wearing the crown, hair pulled back to expose all of his scar. He’s in the fanciest Fire Nation robes she’s ever seen, silk spun with real gold and vibrant reds. 

Really, everyone is in their best finery. Aang has traditional Air Nomad robes - the kind his guardian Gyatso wore - and a wooden necklace carved with air symbols. Sokka is in war paint, Toph in the weepy silks of the Earth Kingdom. Chief Arnook brought high-quality hair ornaments and various finery for Yue, replicas of her fancy hairpins she sold so long ago and a delicate choker of pearl and bone and blue-dyed shell. Yue gives Katara beads for her hair loops that are worth more money than her entire village’s combined resources. 

(This is not a demonstration of Yue’s generosity. This is a testament to how far the North has allowed the South to fall. Yue  will fix this). 

Leaders from all over mingle in the aftermath of Zuko’s coronation. Yue sticks close to her father for the first half of the night, introduced by him as the Princess of the North, future leader of the tribe,  war hero, Tui’s chosen. So many titles, so many accolades, Yue’s embarrassed and grateful and proud all at once. 

Once everyone has had a chance to exchange pleasantries, Yue finds Zuko with Toph at a banquet table tucked away in a corner. Zuko’s eyes light up when he sees her approaching, and she can’t help but smile at how wonderful he is. All he’s overcome. How he can still smile in that soft way after all he’s seen. 

She sneaks a swift, happy kiss when she reaches him, kept quick to avoid negative attention but still filled with love. “You’re doing amazing. I’m so proud of you.”

Zuko hugs her. His draping sleeves feel like a cozy blanket. “You too. I’m glad your dad pulled his head out of his ass.”

Yue’s offended gasp is entirely playful, although she can’t help but wonder how things would’ve turned out without La’s intervention. Would he have ever believed her, if La hadn’t grabbed him by shoulders and shaken the truth into him? Would her fears about returning home have come true? For all that she loves her father, there’s a thread of trust that can never be repaired between them. 

She sees her father as a human now, not an infallible chief. He’s capable of mistakes, awful mistakes. The idolizing light she painted him in as a child has faded. Yue thinks this is for the better, but she’ll miss the security total faith brought her.

-

“I am proud of you, Little Moon.”

The ocean waves were calm, glittering stars reflected in pitch-black water. La swam in lazy circles around the iceberg Yue rested on, scales brushing against her bare feet. 

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Yue responded. “You and Xīng. You’ve done so much for me.”

“All is well, now? Little Moon will come home to the oasis?”

Yue laughed, running her feet along La’s back in an attempt to pet their giant form. “Yes.”

-

The real celebration, the one that’s relaxed and private, is in Ba Sing Se. Iroh has the Jasmine Dragon up and running again, given to him by King Kuei as a reward for liberating the city. The familiarity of it all makes Yue’s heart hurt; the smell of brewing tea, the skyline of cluttered buildings and looming walls, green silks and brown cottons. 

What would life have been like, in a different world where she and Zuko and Iroh and Xīng could’ve lived together in that tiny apartment? 

Zuko serves her a cup of tea and winks, sitting beside her. He’s so  beautiful.

“What’s going to happen now?” 

“I’m going home after this. I’ll fight for my right to chiefdom as the current chief’s heir, and from there it’s reform after reform.” Yue sips her drink. “I was thinking... how should we split time with Xīng? Should we rotate every month? Week? Year?”

Zuko leans against her shoulder. “What about two weeks? And every time they leave we can send them off with a letter. The messenger hawks don’t really enjoy the poles.”

“I- It,” how to articulate the gaping, raw chasm Yue’s anticipating in her heart once she leaves. It’s been less than a year, yet she can’t imagine life without Zuko alongside her. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too.”

-

Two days later, Yue is set to return to the North. Zuko and Iroh see her off. 

“Thank you for looking after my daughter, for loving her, for believing in her when I didn’t.” Chief Arnook swears that he’ll never forget the kindness they payed her, and insists that agreements between countries would reflect his gratitude. 

He also apologizes for trying to skewer Zuko during the invasion. 

“The pleasure was ours,” Iroh says. He rests a hand on her head and smiles. Spirits, Yue will miss that smile. “I’m so proud of you, Yue. You’re always welcome here.”

Yue is crying when she hugs Zuko goodbye. “I love you,” she says, “Stay safe. Take care of yourself. Cuddle Xīng for me. I love you.”

“Love you,” Zuko parrots back, although it’s a bit too much for him - he has to look away while he says it, and his face is bright red. Xīng licks her cheek. “You’re going to do great.”

“So are you.”

-

Coming home is... indescribable. The way the air chills, the familiar cresting of ocean creatures, the increasing number of glaciers standing watch as they sail past. When the walls finally come into view, Yue’s heart  swells . She’s home. She’s home, she’s home, she’s home. 

Awe and joy is joined with dread when she and her father pass the wall. The last memories she has of home aren’t pleasant: the desperation, running, crushing guilt. 

She  ran. How are her people supposed to ever trust her again when she abandoned them? Do they hate her? Are they whispering amongst themselves, accusing and bitter, over the flighty princess who chose to flee into the arms of the enemy? 

The thoughts are a riptide, threatening to pull her under, and Yue wishes Xīng is with her. She already can’t wait until they arrive in a fortnight. 

As their boat glides through the city, Yue notices crowds gathering to watch. People staring, muttering. Vague, shapeless glimmers Yue now recognizes as spirits. The closer Yue is to home, the more people whose gazes pierce her back. It isn’t until the boat docks at the base of her home, familiar and foreboding, that anyone speaks. 

“Your princess has returned!” Her father is shouting, one hand solid on her shoulder. Council members are at the entrance to her house, standing tall behind their chief in solidarity. “Princess Yue, Tui’s chosen, liberated Ba Sing Se in the name of the avatar! She made peace with the Fire Nation! She fought for us, as a true warrior of the Water Tribe!” 

Her ears ring. She’s so nervous, and uncomfortable with all these achievements being assigned to her when all she did was help. Yue didn’t beat the Fire Nation out of Ba Sing Se alone, and she definitely didn’t end the war single-handedly. Her father’s praises felt like empty brags. If her people knew the full story, surely they’d be disappointed? 

It takes a few seconds for the ringing to die down, but when it does, she realizes the roaring sound Yue attributed to her rushing heart is people  cheering.

Cheering for  her.

Yue sobs. 

She really is  home .

-

Her father throws a gigantic party that night to celebrate. There are banquet tables topped with the best meats and dried greens available, enough for everyone in the city to come. Bonfires are started, master waterbenders recruited for stunning ice sculptures and entertainment. Not only that, the ceremonial dancers are present in full garb, the kind reserved for only the most special occasions. 

Yue can smell the smoke from the oasis. The black koi, who she now knows is La, rubs against her hand over and over, gumming her fingers and splashing at the surface of the water. Tui is much calmer, a simple brush against her wrist every once in a while. 

In the corner of her eyes, Yue sees other spirits; bunnies like Xīng, foxes with eight eyes, bears suspiciously similar to Bosco save for their white fur. If she turns to look at them directly they vanish, so Tui and La get most of the attention. 

Somehow the oasis water is warm and welcoming, even surrounded by glaciers that never melt. The grass is soft under her legs, the sky dizzyingly full of stars, the moon bright and full and calming. 

It seems Yue won’t have any problems arguing for the title of chief, when the time comes. 

Chief Yue. She likes the sound of that. 

Until then, her new renown will be essential in gathering support for reforms, both the ones she pushes her father to institute and the ones Yue makes herself. Restablish contact with the south. Aid in reconstruction of the south. Expand trade with Earth Kingdom ports, end isolation policies, allow women to choose fighting and men to choose healing.

In two weeks, Xīng will arrive with Zuko’s first letter, Yue hopes his time as Fire Lord isn’t too horribly stressful, what with all the unhappy war criminals making up his country. When he’s ready, after the crucial stuff like reparations have been established, Yue will invite him up north for trade agreements. While he’s here, she’ll give him the grand tour she’s always wanted to. She can show him her room, the glistening frozen architecture he missed the first time around, introduce him to Tui and La and authentic Water Tribe food pulled straight from the ocean. 

And maybe after that, far in the future when relationships with the Fire Nation aren’t so strained and government positions are stable, the time they spend together won’t need to be excused with politics. They could grow old together, spend half a year in the Fire Nation and the other half in the Water Tribe. Xīng will be there, spoiled with treats and pets. Iroh will be brewing tea with Pakku. Her father will look at the two of them and smile approvingly. 

They’ll be together. Yue and Zuko. Together, happy, holding hands.

Yue can’t wait.


End file.
